Catholic Specs

I missed the Mass in the Holy Spirit because I was in England at a wargames conference. This involved serious and light-hearted simulations, various talks and a sing-song. One fascinating talk was on CyberWars and the importance of the human factor.
The presenter was an ex-spook and observed that in a few years, over 40% of the world's population would live on the edge of the Indian Ocean or on rivers which flow into it. Their concern was access to water not energy.

My talk was on Catholic Specs. Here's a summary:

Catholic Specs

I'm a Christian. I'd like to suggest that you need to put on Catholic Specs to see Western military history more clearly.

For most of our recorded history, Britain was Catholic. Yet our military historians seem to have a blind-spot about this. They do not engage with the importance of belief in God during wars of the past. But they are missing a key factor.

I’d like to offer a couple of examples to show what I mean.

Bannockburn

Before the battle, there was a famous event when the Scots were recorded as kneeling and the English king Edward observed this saying ‘Yon folk are kneeling to ask mercy.’ He was advised that they asked God for mercy for their sins, rather than from him.

People have argued that this was the moment when the Scots knelt to be ‘shriven’ of their sins, or when Mass was said. Yet both armies were Catholic; both armies attended Mass and both were ‘shriven’. There should have been no observable differences between the religious practices of the two Catholic armies facing each other.

My Catholic Specs would suggest that something extra was involved. Something that was specific to Scottish Catholicism at that time. I believe that what was happening in 1314 was the veneration of Columba’s reliquary (contained in the Brecbennoch) as this was carried in front of the Scottish lines. Even today we Catholics would genuflect at such a moment. However a lack of Catholic sensitivity has led to an ignorance of the way a medieval Catholic army would respond to the ancient relics of their saint being carried in front of them. There would have been a "Mexican-wave Genuflection" as the relics were carried along the front.

Victorian accounts completely fail to see this and even Chris Brown’s recent account of the battle ascribes this event to an imagined headcount and alignment exercise by sub-unit commanders because he is looking for an earthly explanation.

While Brown’s account of the battle is the most accurate available, he rejects my proposal that the soldiers knelt as the relics were carried before them because he hasn’t got Catholic Specs.

 The Monymusk Reliquary

The Crusades

There is a famous D-Day monument named ‘The Crusader Sword’ on Juno Beach at Courseulles-sur-Mer. This suggests that the people of the time saw that the Crusades were an attempt to liberate an oppressed population, as was D-Day.

 'Crusader Sword' - Courseulles-sur-Mer

I would argue that the Crusades prefigure the Allied liberation of France in several ways. A western force travelled  east to liberate a people oppressed by a recent invader; many innocent civilian casualties were incurred (50,000 French civilian casualties from the Allied bombing of Normandy/unknown thousands massacred after the siege of Jerusalem, 3,000 to 40,000 depending on source); crimes against the existing rules of war were committed (execution of SS prisoners of war/massacres in captured towns beyond the first day); long-term military influence was secured (NATO/The Crusader Kingdoms) and earthly power was enhanced (Eisenhower’s Presidency/Urban’s Papacy).

There were several military ventures which we know as Crusades.  These included actions against heretics as well as against Muslim-held territory in the West, such as the Reconquista (Retaking) of Spain and also against Muslim pirates and slavers from North Africa.  These 'Barbary Corsairs' attacked coastal settlements in Christian Europe, taking well over a million people into slavery between 1530 and 1780, including the entire population of Baltimore in County Cork captured and sold into slavery in 1631. Their piracy and slave-trading only stopped in 1830, following a French invasion.

I’m going to look at the First Crusade, since this initiated the response and was the only Christian success in 300 years of attempting to hold the advance of Muslim armies in the Holy Land.

In the summer of 1096 between 60,000 and 100,000 Catholics set out to walk from western Europe to the Holy Land.  These were men and women drawn from all sections of society, travelling on an armed pilgrimage to liberate the Holy Places, in particular Jerusalem. They were responding to the call of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 yet there had been centuries of broadly peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Christians.

The co-existence between Muslim rulers and Christian subjects and pilgrims had continued under the Fatmid Caliphate but was disrupted when the Holy Land was invaded by the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuks instituted a pogrom against Christians and restricted their movement. Pilgrimages became both more difficult and more dangerous. They confiscated Christian property, burned crosses, destroyed churches and built mosques on their sites. ‘By 1014 over 30,000 churches had been destroyed or pillaged’.  This created an atmosphere of collective outrage in Europe which Vidmar compares to that following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour or the destruction of the World Trade Centre in 2001. 

The Seljuks captured Jerusalem from the Fatmids in 1071 and Alexius I, the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, appealed to western Christians for help. Pope Urban called the Council of Clermont as a response. There are six accounts of Urban’s speech but all share the same key message ‘to carry aid to the lands of our friends and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends’.  We shouldn’t be misled by recent movies which portray these volunteers as evil, rapacious invaders intent on destroying a peaceful Muslim earthly paradise.

These Pilgrims saw themselves on an errand of mercy which, although initially successful ended in failure and defeat by the Seljuks. Indeed, the Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) was so badly organised that it was diverted by the Venetians and led to the sacking of Constantinople. This was strongly condemned by Pope Innocent III yet is still cited by many Eastern Orthodox Christians as a major obstacle to reunion with the Catholic Church.

The Crusades were seen as a military intervention to protect the weak from an aggressive invader. I would argue that the First Crusade was no less moral than the Allied invasion of Normandy, indeed there are striking similarities. The Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a famous letter to the troops who were about to undertake Operation Overlord in 1944. It begins, ‘You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade’ and sets out the aim, ‘you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.’  Eisenhower concludes with a prayer, ‘And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking’. 

 Click to Enlarge

I would suggest that military historian's engagement with Christian Europe is weakened by ignoring the high religious motivation which saw the first-sons and best of European Christendom mortgaging their estates so that they could aid fellow-Christians who were under the attack of Suljik Muslims. 

And by ignoring the Christian men who struggled up the Normandy beaches during Operation Overlord praying ‘Over Lord….Over Lord’.

Lepanto

The forces of Catholic Europe engaged a huge Muslim fleet under very disadvantageous circumstances. The Pope had asked for Rosaries to be said for Victory.

Later, he had a vision of a victory and ordered that the bells of Rome be rung.

This turned out to be at the very time of that victory……many days before news arrived from the Fleet Commander.

A very public demonstration and open to ridicule if he was wrong.

He wasn’t.

Here’s the start of Chesterton’s poem Lepanto:

     White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
     And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
     There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
     It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
     It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
     For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
     They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
     They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
     And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
     And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
     The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
     The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
     From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
     And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

I looked at ways to simulate Lepanto.