Professional Documents
Culture Documents
One cannot be blamed for thinking that during the Dark Ages and
the Early Middle Ages, there was little or nothing known of the
Nation States or how -- if at all -- they were conceived. And while
the middle ages was ubiquitously violent and volatile -- and can
often be likened to a game of chess, played out for real by endless
petty kings (mostly relatives) and neighbouring city states
(especially in Italy) -- the real governor of the European land mass,
never to be found on a Chess Board, was the Pope.
It was a time when everyone was running off to Rome to pay one’s
respects to the sole overlording religion in Italy. The story of Jesus
had been doing the rounds and, as Wycliffe had pointed out, the
corruption of mother Church was so horrific, that the Pope’s next
move was to swamp Europe with young men called Benedictines,
Franciscans, Dominicans, etc., etc.. The church became the biggest
1
employer in Europe for hordes of unwanted young men and women
who could not afford a horse, a sword, a helmet, a suit of mail, a
kite shield, a long bow and a romping great horse! In a way, the
crusades was a means of enlisting holy men into the church’ s
military knighthood: and this is an insight that ought not to be
discounted today, when the RC Church recruits all over the world
for people who are prepared to embark upon an individually
inspiring career, but who in reality are co-opted into a terrible
army.
The ‘Normans’ are neither the beginning nor the end of history; nor
are they an item -- however interesting -- to be considered solely
in their own environment. If -- as we are tired of reiterating -- ‘All
history begins now, with our consciousness and knowledge of the
past, and of what the past means for us now’, then the Normans
are most instructive by reference to their relationship with the more
enduring Papacy. While the genius of the bloody Normans was
partly to be seen in their assimilability, the messianic designs of the
Papacy are infinitely more significant to our understanding of
Western and World history as a whole.
With the present enthusiasm for Norman history and the Middle
Ages at an unprecedented ‘high’, there is the very strong possibility
that we (and the gurus at the BBC) may not see the wood for the
trees, thereby missing one of the great opportunities (and to my
mind ‘duties’) of public broadcasting, namely, to educate the public,
thereby making the much more aware of the daily contemporary
forces at play in our time.
2
military affairs by the Papacy from being recounted in the same
breadth as the 'secular powers'. It is as if the ‘Normans’ were
entirely autonomous in their military agenda and the raging
antagonisms between Papacy and Emperor, between the ‘spiritual
sword’ and the ‘temporal sword’ was never an ubiquitous military
reality.
3
This perspective could well be moved forward through the crusades
against the Pagans,Jews, Albigensians, Huguenots and assorted
Protestants. Indeed, if we look at the reign of King John (1167 –
1216), we see this thesis of expanding Papal and Christian
hegemony made perfectly real. And if we look to Wycliffe for an
explanation of these events, it becomes clear that it is Papal greed
that prompts a new consciousness of the nation state (of England),
as well as the perpetual role adapted by the Roman Church in world
politics.
Isn’t it time to drag Christianity into the open, unmask its janus-
like militant/mendicant face, and observe its messianic heart ?
The Christian Conquest, both in its religious zeal and its ancillary
compulsion to conquer the world, has always been known to the
world. That this struggle, constantly made universal by the
4
relentless missionary zeal of the churches, has hardly been
touched, much less analyzed. Dare one suggest to the BBC that
Professor Bartlett’s account of the Normans be re-conceived in this
light; that a discussion panel be invited to carry the exploits of the
Normans forward into the succeeding centuries that have truly
marred the landscape of Europe and the World. Isn’t it time to let
history and our sense of history inform our present consciousness
of its intimate ties with religious imperialism? Isn’t it especially
opportune, now that the Catholic Church is visibly driving the world
into an “Islam/Christian” , “Religious/Secular”, “Christian/Atheism”,
“Darwinian/Creationist” divide, to examine the role of Christianity
and the Papacy in this world-wide agitation for world dominance?
It has been well said that ‘all history begins NOW’. Let us therefore
use Professor Bartlett’s account of the ‘Normans’ as a starting point
towards our understanding of NOW in all its mea-culpa dimensions!
Seamus Breathnach
www.irish-criminology.com