Crusades

1
Crusades

• and Courtly Love

2
Questions on Speech of Urban II at the Council of
Clermont Two accounts

1. Does Urban's speech provide any evidence of the
   influence of the Gregorian Reform? What roles
   does he assume for the clergy as a whole? For lay
   people? For the papacy?
2. Does Urban's speech provide evidence for a belief
   in Christendom as a unified entity? How does
   Urban define his society? How does he define the
   enemy?
3. Does the speech provide evidence of the power of
   the clergy and papacy? Does it suggest limits to
   that power? To whom does Urban turn for support?
   What rewards and punishments do he and the clergy
   have at their disposal?

3
Questions on Urbans speech

1. How peaceful a society does the West seem to have
   been in the eleventh century, to judge from these
   sources?
2. What seems to have been the motives for the
   Crusades?
3. Compare and contrast these two accounts. Do you
   think either is reliable? Why or why not?

4
Questions on Two Letters from Crusaders

1. How do these men regard the enemy? Their own
   side? Is there evidence in these sources for a
   belief in Christendom as a whole?
2. Judging from these letters, why did people go on
   the Crusade?
3. Was the Islamic world united in defense of the
   Holy Land?
4. Is there any evidence here that illuminates the
   role of noblewomen in marriage?

5
Questions on Marie de France Eliduc

1. To judge from this source, what were the
   expectations for married men? Married women? What
   constraints existed on married people in the High
   Middle Ages, and what was the source for such
   constraints? Was divorce possible?
2. What expectations affected the relationship
   between lords and their men in the twelfth
   century, according to this source?
3. What might be the strengths and weaknesses of
   literary sources for historians, based on your
   reading of Eliduc?