Date/Time
Date(s) - 21 Sep 2011
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
Faculty House, Room 2
Category(ies) No Categories
University Seminar on Medieval Studies:
Louis Hamilton, of Drew University, will speak on “’You should be Aaron:’ Exegesis, Reform, and the Second Crusade”
Bruno of Segni (d. 1123) was the premier biblical exegete in the papal courts of Gregory VII (1073-1085), Urban II (1087-99), and Paschal II (1099-1118). He was with Urban II at Clermont in 1095 when the first Crusade was promoted and, in 1106, he was sent by Paschal II with Bohemond of Antioch (1058-1111) to promote the second Crusade. While relatively little attention has been paid to his exegesis, almost no scholarship has examined in detail his preaching on behalf of the Crusades. This is, in part, because it is not clear that we have Bruno’s sermons from that period. This paper examines Bruno’s exegesis in order to shed further light on the relationship between the eleventh-century reforms and crusading. If we consider the language of the reformers around the early Crusades, language concerned with “the liberation of the Church,” taking up “the way of the Lord,” “the heavenly Jerusalem,” the assault on “pagans and Jews,” we can see how Bruno’s exegesis helped build the desire for Jerusalem itself. In fact, much of the same language used during the papacies of Gregory VII, Urban II and Paschal II to conceive of and promote the first Crusade was also used by Bruno to explain the allegorical significance of the Bible in general, but notably of the Pentateuch in particular. Therefore, while we may not be able to reconstruct precisely Bruno’s preaching on behalf of the second Crusade, we can better appreciate how the ideals of the reformers promoted military conquest in the eastern Mediterranean.
PLEASE NOTE:
The talk will be followed by dinner at Faculty House. All those who wish to dine with the speaker after the talk must make reservations by contacting the rapporteur of the seminar, Jeffrey Wayno, either by phone or by email no later than one week before the talk. Dinner is a fixed Italian menu, which costs $24 per person. Payment can be made to the rapporteur by cash or check, although checks are preferred.