In a time that honored martial prowess and piety above all else, the warrior bishop was the physical embodiment of the medieval ethos: a literal soldier for Christ, baptizing souls with water and blood – a militant dealer of sacraments and death. Like a metamorphic gemstone forged under the intense heat and pressure of tectonic friction, the unique archetype of the warrior bishop was a product of the convergence of spiritual and religious combat. When Christian and heathen worlds collided, religious differences and physical confrontation coincided – the warrior bishop was the bulwark against these converging threats. This controversial fusion of clergyman and soldier often played a pivotal role on the medieval battlefield and shaped the West’s understanding of piety, violence, and warfare. The warrior bishop became a symbol of Christendom’s struggle against forces and ideologies that threatened its existence.
To understand how these unique figures shaped the medieval Church’s perception of conflict, let’s examine their development throughout the medieval period. We will examine four distinct periods: the Late Roman Era, where bishops would first lead soldiers and fight out of necessity; the early middle ages, where a consolidation occurred between Church and state leading to a militarization of the priesthood; the Crusades, where heroes and villains would arise among the clergy; finally we’ll look at the Late Middle Ages, where brazen overreach would lead to the Church’s rupture.
Power Shift: Bishops on the Battlefield in the Late Roman Era
Despite widespread oppression throughout the Roman Empire, early Christians maintained a pacifist philosophy. Persecution and martyrdom were ever-present dangers, often borne with meek acquiescence in true Christ-like fashion. Having little political power, Christians were left to the whims of those with more earthly authority. This power dynamic shifted, aptly, on a battlefield – Constantine’s vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D. signaled a momentous change in Christianity’s fate. Not only would it be the impetus to change Christianity’s official status as a religion, the battle where Constantine commanded his men to paint a Chi Rho on their shields was a precursor to more direct Christian involvement on battlefields of the future.
Constantine would consequently be the first to introduce clergymen directly onto the front lines. Accompanied by symbols of the cross flying high over Roman legions [1], clergymen joined soldiers during battle – not as fighters, but as symbolic additions meant to boost morale. Though priests now accompanied troops during military campaigns, their role changed little from their peacetime brethren. Offering mass, hearing confession, and tending the sick were all standard duties of these wartime clerics [2].
Bishops weren’t seen exercising full military command until nearly a century later. One of the first examples took place shortly after Easter in 429 when Germanus, bishop and former duke of Autissiodorum, assumed leadership of the Britons during a Saxon raid on Mold, a small mountain village in northern Wales. The bishop’s prior experience as general surely proved invaluable when he hand-selected a group of soldiers, carried their banner, and led the force to a vale, hoping to ambush the invaders before they reached the village. As the raiders approached, the freshly baptized Britons gave three shouts of “Alleluia!” – their new battle cry taught to them by Germanus. Startled by the yells reverberating throughout the low hills, the raiders assumed the sound could only have been made by a massive army, fleeing before any blood could be spilled [3]. Germanus’s fellow bishops were elated that he had won the battle without bloodshed, calling it a “victory gained by faith and not by force.” [4]
Germanus would develop a reputation for his confrontational style. The bold bishop famously challenged the barbarian king “Goar,” ruler of the Alans, convincing the king to hold off an attack against insurgents in Armorica while waiting for direct orders from the emperor in Italy (the Alans were sent to quell the rebellion by Aetus, the most influential general in the empire at the time). To defy a king was no small feat, and soon Germanus had a cult following. His heroic exploits were eventually passed down across generations and his name became etched into legend – he was a shoo-in for sainthood.
The Church at the time was not so enthusiastic about the confrontational style that Germanus and bishops like him championed. St. Paul’s warning that “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but…against spiritual wickedness in high places” [5] seemed to refute the necessity of having clergy lead armies of soldiers. That a cleric should be engaged in spiritual, not physical, combat was the prevailing viewpoint. Presented with this tension, the early Church wrestled with properly defining clergy’s role during wartime. The first full-fledged clerical prohibition on military service appeared at the Council of Chalcedon in 451:
“We decree that those who have once joined the ranks of the clergy or have become monks are not to depart on military service or for secular office. Those who dare do this, and do not repent and return to what, in God, they previously chose, are to be anathematised.” [3]
Later in 546, Canon I of the Council of Lérida specified that clergy were forbidden from spilling blood:
“…It is established that those who serve at the altar and handle the body and the blood of Christ, or who are allotted to the office of the holy vessel, should restrain themselves from all human blood, indeed [even] from that of the enemy…” [3]
The Church teaching was clear: clerics should not engage in military service and should not spill blood. Despite these official restrictions, the days of finding a bishop at the head of an army had just begun; bishops continued to participate in military ventures over the next millennia, becoming trusted advisors, generals, and, in some cases like Germanus, military heroes.
Thus a new kind of leader had emerged from the vestiges of the dying western Roman Empire – a shepherd of Christ who not only led believers in spiritual matters, but also commanded armor-clad warriors to protect his flock from flesh-and-blood dangers.
Church and State: Consolidation in the Early Middle Ages
As the blazing light of Christendom flooded across the frigid forests of northern europe, confrontation between followers of the Old Gods and Christ’s faithful was inevitable. Certainly Charlemagne’s wars of conquest facilitated this friction – there can be little doubt that many of the ensuing conflicts were initiated by Christian forces who pressed their way into stubborn pagan holdouts. The seemingly endless Saxon wars, marked by the tragic massacre at Verden in 782 where the Franks slaughtered 4500 Saxons in a single day, attest to the adversarial and often brutal nature of pagan and Christian contact. It should be no surprise, then, that Charlemagne, a deeply pious and visionary leader, sought to inspire a religious zeal in his followers hoping to boost morale during his long campaigns. Therefore he “encouraged interpretations of these campaigns in religious terms and that they might be considered examples of religious war.” [6]
One way he accomplished this religious reframing was by recruiting clergy directly into his army; in fact he expected clergy to fight when called upon – the vaunted Frankish king had no qualms about meddling in ecclesiastical affairs and supported an integrated Church and state. His clerics’ metal was tested in his expansionist wars against the Saxons and later wars against Saracens in Iberia. Some bishops justified the bloodshed on the grounds that Charlemagne’s enemies were largely non-Christian and posed a spiritual threat to their flocks. Thus the concept of milites Christi, “soldiers of Christ,” an allegory usually applied to spiritual warfare, was applied literally by Charlemagne to pressure high ranking clergymen into positions of martial leadership [7]
Charlemagne’s recruitment campaign coincided with an increasing amount of nobility among the clergy’s ranks (often second or third sons of nobles who were encouraged to ‘take the cloth’), meaning they held obligations to fight for their lord when called upon. Charlemagne could then leverage these feudal obligations to bolster his armies with clergymen. The Christian soldiers among the ranks would have welcomed the addition of clergy, believing their holy presence tilted the outcome of battles toward victory [7].
A century later, Charlemagne’s strategy was appropriated by the dynasty that inhabited once-Carolingian lands; following Charlemagne’s precedent set in the eighth and ninth centuries, the Holy Roman Empire’s Ottonian Dynasty accelerated the integration of Church and state. Clergy’s land and loyalty increasingly belonged to Otto I and his successors in the Reichskirchensystem, or “Imperial Church system.” This system sought to co-opt Church lands for state purposes, specifically those of the military. One of the chief duties imposed on clerical institutions by the Reichskirchensystem was the Burgbann – a decree that demanded monasteries maintain a series of vital fortifications throughout the empire [7]. Bishoprics and military leadership thus became intertwined: the planning and execution needed to maintain these strongholds required continuous communication between the two. Naturally a consolidation occurred.
Though official teaching still prohibited bishops from military engagement, the Church’s increasing involvement in both the interpersonal aspect– “boots on the ground” – and logistical planning of warfare gradually warmed its disposition toward the warrior bishop archetype. According to Warrior Bishops: The Development of the Fighting Clergy under the Ottonians in the Tenth Century by Jordan Becker, these fighting prelates were often viewed as champions:
“The attitude towards the fighting clergy developed alongside its importance; by…the early eleventh century, violence perpetrated by the clergy was a normal subject and the warrior bishop was a heroic figure.” [7]
Across the English channel clergy had been fighting alongside kings in major battles as early as the late-9th century proving the consolidation between Church and military was not an isolated phenomenon. Bishop Heahmund of Sherborne is recorded as fighting for King Æthelred I of Wessex and his brother Alfred against the Danes. In 871, he was slain at the Battle of Meretun. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
“…King Æthelred and his brother Alfred fought against the army at Meretun, and they were in two divisions; and they put both to flight and were victorious far on into the day; and there was a great slaughter on both sides; and the Danes had possession of the battlefield. And Bishop Heahmund was killed there and many important men.” [8]
Another British conflict saw one of the most prominent warrior bishops in the early middle ages – Odo, half brother of William the Conqueror, and Bishop of Bayeux. Odo played a crucial role in the shaping of British history when he fought alongside Duke William in 1066 during the invasion of England; he’s shown on the Bayeux tapestry as wielding a club (or possibly mace) and sporting chain-mail armor during the pivotal Battle of Hastings.
His martial responsibilities were secondary to his duties as a bishop – offering prayers for victory and providing moral support for the soldiers. Nonetheless Odo must have been eager to prove himself militarily to Duke William. Norman chronicler William of Portiers notes how Odo rallied wavering troops during a pivotal moment of the battle when it was believed the duke had been killed:
“They [Norman warriors] were very much afraid and on the point of leaving; they intended to abandon the equipment, but did not know any means of escape, when Odo, the good priest, who was ordained in Bayeux, spurred his horse, saying to them: ‘Stand still, stand still! Calm down and do not move! Do not fear anything, for, please God, we will win the day.’ In this way they were reassured and did not stir. Odo went spurring back to where the battle was at its fiercest; that day he had truly shown his worth. He had donned a short hauberk over a white shirt. Its body was broad and its sleeves were broad; he sat on an all-white horse and everyone recognised him. He held a club in his hand, made the knights head for where the need was greatest and brought them to a stop there. He often made them attack and often made them strike.107” [3]Promoted to Earl of Kent after the battle, Odo held vast swathes of English land; his personal wealth and proximity to William made him the second most powerful man in England. Thus Odo enjoyed the peculiar position of wielding great influence within both the ecclesiastical and secular realms. This duality is depicted on his official seal – on the left, a knight with sword in hand; on the right, a bishop in full vestments carrying a crosier [9].
Promoted to Earl of Kent after the battle, Odo held vast swathes of English land; his personal wealth and proximity to William made him the second most powerful man in England. Thus Odo enjoyed the peculiar position of wielding great influence within both the ecclesiastical and secular realms. This duality is depicted on his official seal – on the left, a knight with sword in hand; on the right, a bishop in full vestments carrying a crosier [9].
Given his aristocratic background and wealth, Odo had the means to afford whichever weapon he pleased, so the question arises as to why Odo chose a club over more conventional weapons like an ax or sword? As noted earlier, clergy were prohibited from shedding blood in Canon I of the Council of Lérida. Some scholars speculate that Odo fought with a club because a bludgeoning weapon was less likely to shed blood than a bladed one [3]. Odo and other fighting clergymen may have taken a literal interpretation of the canon and used bludgeoning weapons in order to skirt the prohibition via technicality. This is highly disputed. The Walpurgis Fechtbuch, a medieval German fencing manual seems to dispel this idea, showing characters dressed like priests using swords in combat.
Speculation aside, Odo, Heahmund, and the bishops under Carolingian and Ottonian rule exhibit the developing convergence of Church and state in the early middle ages. The result was a militarization of the priesthood, who were often obligated to fight for their lords based on feudal obligations. Though the original fighting prelates took up arms based on necessity, it was now political pressure that often held a bigger influence over the bishops.
Holy War: Heroes and Villains of the Crusades
Given that it was the Bishop of Rome Urban II who began the First Crusade in legendary fashion when he proclaimed “Deus Vult!” (God wills it!) at the Council of Clermont in 1095, it is fitting that clergy were instrumental in seeing it through. Though Urban initiated the holy fervor that entangled Christian and Islamic worlds in centuries of warfare, the circumstances that forced Urban’s hand were not of his choosing. Christendom found itself sandwiched between Islamic territory in Iberia to the East and Anatolia to the West. The crown jewel of Christendom, Constantinople, was a mere stone’s throw from being conquered by the Seljuk Turks. Byzantine Emperor Alexius urged his western counterparts to come to his aid; he hoped his Latin allies would answer his call and repel the heathen forces that were now beating down his door. The Western response was monumental and catapulted the Middle East into an era of religious conflict.
The crusading era would be defined by the holy wars that stained the sands of Outremer in crimson; it would also be defined by the clergy who took part in those wars. None were more integral to the crusades than Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy and one of the leaders of the First Crusade. Adhemar was one of the earliest supporters of the endeavor, showing zeal at the Council of Clermont even before the Pope had officially declared the holy war. Urban II appointed him apostolic legate, or nuncio, and he was selected to head the expedition along with Raymond of Toulouse and several other prominent nobles (Adhemar undertook a pilgrimage in 1086 and was familiar with the Holy Land, making him a good choice for a leadership role in the quest).
Greatly admired by other clergy, Adhemar was unanimously chosen from amongst their ranks when Urban sought advice as to who should lead. Eyewitness to the council Robert the Monk describes him as “like a second Moses,” reluctantly accepting “the generalship and direction of the people of the Lord.” [10] Adhemar was praised by “nobiles et ignobiles” (nobles and commoners) alike; during the campaign, Raymond and the other principes often squabbled over command, yet Adhemar was universally held in high regard and recognized as the sole spiritual leader of the crusade.
Adhemar was crucial to the crusader’s morale, particularly during the siege and subsequent defense of the city of Antioch. As the crusaders besieged the city he instituted religious rites, fasts, and observance of holy days. After an earthquake ravaged the surrounding area, he ordered a strict three day fast and had the priests perform mass, say prayers, and sing the Psalms. Contemporary chronicle Guibert of Nogent recorded that “the legate let no Sunday or holiday go by without preaching and enjoining every cleric to do the same.”[10] Afterward, when they occupied the city and now faced an attack from the Seljuks, he organized a procession from Church to Church throughout the streets of the ancient city, and when many crusaders succumbed to panic, he had the gates locked so that none could flee in a moment of weakness.
Unfortunately the good bishop was taken by illness while in Antioch and died in August 1098, though visions of him were common amongst the remaining crusaders, often urging them to take Jerusalem. In one vision, he instructed the crusaders to fast and lead a procession around the walls of the holy city. It would seem not even death could prevent Adhemar from heartening the latin crusaders. They obeyed his instructions and conquered the city less than a year after his death in 1099.
After Jerusalem was captured and a Christian kingdom forged in Outremer, clergy continued to influence military involvement in the region. One benedictine abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, helped form the most famous military order of all time: The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, commonly known as the Knights Templar. A cast of warrior monks tasked with defending pilgrims on their journey to holy sites, the templars took the concept of milites christi to a new level.
Less clergy than warrior, the knights were backed by the prominent abbott and future Saint Bernard, who may have been more than a little biased toward his close friend Hugh de Paynes, the first Grand Master of the order. He assured these knights that if they died advancing Christ’s kingdom, they were not sinning because they were partaking in a spiritual war:
“This, I repeat, is a new kind of knighthood and one unknown in ages past. It indefatigably wages a twofold combat, against flesh and blood and against a spiritual host of evil in the heavens…And when war is waged by spiritual strength against vices or demons, this, too, is nothing remarkable, though I consider it praiseworthy, for the world is full of monks. But for a man powerfully to gird himself with both swords and nobly mark his belt… Truly a fearless knight and secure on every side is he whose soul is protected by the armor of faith just as his body is protected by armor of steel. Doubly armed, surely, he need fear neither demons nor men.” [11]
Bernard’s comments show an opinion not dissimilar to clergy at the time of Charlemagne – that the spiritual war sometimes spilled out into the realm of flesh and blood, therefore it was justified for clergy to use violence to protect their flocks. The main difference between Bernard’s time and Charlemagne’s was that the idea of violence for the sake of spiritual welfare had now become mainstream across the West due to the popularity of the crusades.
The passion induced by the crusades created a world inundated with talk of spiritual deliverance by the strength of one’s sword arm, leading some clergy to develop an unhealthy zeal for warfare. Cistercian abbot Arnauld Amalric rose to prominence during the Cathar Crusade and took part in the “Massacre at Béziers” – an indiscriminate slaughter of heathens and Catholics alike. It began in 1204 when Pope Innocent III sent the newly appointed papal legate and inquisitor on a mission to convert the Cathars, a gnostic sect that was carving out a foothold in northern Italy and southern France. After failing to convert anyone, Amalric looked for new methods to bring the Cathars to heel. The bishop then relied on the condemnation issued at a church council held in Tours – that Cathars should have their property confiscated and thrown into prison – to incite violence against the stubborn heretics. Perhaps, Amalric thought, the coaxing of a sharpened steel blade would succeed where evangelism had failed.The Pope’s recently issued crusade against the Cathars only bolstered his cause.
Thus Amalric’s crusaders took aim at Béziers, a town with a strong Cathar community and a viscount who was lenient toward their presence. According to a contemporary chronicler, the city was “entirely infected with the poison of heresy” and “brimful of every kind of sin.” [12] In 1209, Amalric led a siege against the city. The bishop described the frenzied battle in a letter penned to Pope Innocent III:
“Indeed, because there is no strength nor is there cunning against God, while discussions were still going on with the barons about the release of those in the city who were deemed to be Catholics, the servants and other persons of low rank and unarmed attacked the city without waiting for orders from their leaders. To our amazement, crying “to arms, to arms!”, within the space of two or three hours they crossed the ditches and the walls and Béziers was taken. Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt, as divine vengeance miraculously raged against it.” [13]
An undoubtedly savage affair if Amalric’s testimony is to be believed. Another Cisctercian, Caesarius of Heisterbach, related how, when Amalric was confronted by the revelation that there were Catholics mixed in amongst the Cathars in the city, he uttered some of the most famous words of the medieval era, commanding his men: “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius – Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His” [14]. His headstrong behavior and vicious command indicates the level of familiarity some bishops now had with administering violence. Clergy regularly crossed blades with enemies of the Church – a far cry from the pacifist philosophy of the earliest bishops.
Bishops were central to the crusading era; the religious conflicts saw many clerical heroes christened during the tumultuous period. These champions were spiritual leaders and morale boosters like Adhemar or powerful administrators who forged new ways for clergy to become militarily involved like Bernard. However, this era also revealed a darker side of the warrior bishop archetype. The constant proximity to violence drew out of some prelates a blood-lust seemingly unquenched by defensive conflicts; only a massacre could satisfy the likes of Amalric. These darker episodes foreshadow a complicated period to come, a period that would be the last great era of the warrior bishop.
The Warrior Pope
Though crusading fervor dwindled in the late middle ages, bishops continued to play a role in military conflict. In 1346 at the Battle of Neville’s Cross, a total of 6 bishops participated: bishops of Durham, Lincoln, York, and Caterbury led forces for England alongside Lord Neville; the Bishops of Aberdeen and St. Andrews were present with the Scots under King David II [15]. A thoroughly Catholic-on-Catholic conflict, Neville’s Bridge shows that bishops’ involvement in war was not always confined strictly to inter-religious disputes and they sometimes did battle with other Christians.
A character who engaged in nearly unceasing battles against fellow Christians, historical juggernaut Julius II, the “Warrior Pope,” was perhaps the apex of the evolution of the warrior bishop. Born Giuliano della Rovere, Julius was elected to the papacy in 1503 amidst the thick of the Italian Wars. As pope he embraced the back-and-forth political jostling of the various powers vying for the Italian peninsula and took an active role in the military affairs of Rome. His main military aspiration was to regain former lands of the diminished Papal States. Though not the first warrior cleric to occupy the Chair of Peter, Julius left a legacy unmatched by those before him.
Few figures have surpassed the sheer gravitas of Julius II. A close friend of Michelangelo and an avid patron of the arts, the pope has been characterized as a man of culture with a warrior spirit. An extremely violent temper meant he often lost self-control, and was said to be “rude and often even vulgar in manner.” Despite his abrasive mannerisms, he was resolute in his decision-making and “everywhere he saw and sought out greatness” [16]. In addition to his epithet “the warrior pope” he was often referred to as the “terrible pope,” a name suggesting his awe-inspiring, yet frightening presence. He was a fanatic of vigorous, manly activity: horse riding, hunting, and most of all the “feel of armor.”
Not content with simply directing campaigns from his papal palace in Rome, Julius demanded to lead armies in person, acting as commander on the field of battle suited in full armor with sword in hand. As Machiavelli wrote in his political masterpiece The Prince, “all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.” Julius preferred to be an armed prophet. As pope he led armies on at least two occasions, the first in 1506 to expel the tyrant of Bologna, Giovanni Bentivoglio. Julius marched with a French contingent sent by Louis XII into the city as Bentivoglio fled. The second saw the Papal States capture the city of Ferrara in June of 1512.
During his military excursions Julius commissioned what is today the world’s oldest army, the Swiss Guard. Originally co-opted as a mercenary force used to bolster his military, the Guard soon earned distinction as fierce and loyal fighters. Julius referred to them as “Defenders of the Church’s freedom,” a nickname which reveals how he saw the Church’s conflicts at the time – not expansionist wars for land and resources, but wars of reclamation to ensure the Church’s autonomy and stability.
A man of infinite prowess and vitality, Julius II lived a life completely alien to the ethos of modern clergy. The Warrior Pope had no qualms about jumping in the fray of political disputes or even full-fledged wars, hoping to carve out Christ’s kingdom with bravado and blood rather than through merely prayer and penance. Though the spiritual father to the Christian world, he modeled many of the practical, even worldly pursuits of the day – warfare chief among them. Julius’s tactics were not only controversial by today’s standards; in his own time the faithful were often left questioning where his spiritual authority began and his earthly power ended. Many saw his unrestrained political and military involvement as tyrannical, and hands-on pontificate led directly to the Protestant Reformation a few years after his death, transforming the Church – and the Western world – forever.
What Should We Make of Warrior Bishops?
As the dust settled in the wake of the Reformation, the Church, governments, and militaries transformed. The proliferation of professional armies in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries meant feudal levies were increasingly uncommon. Bishops and other clerics were no longer tied to their lords’ military ambitions. The prevalence of fighting clergy greatly diminished from their heyday during the medieval period. Some clergy could be found in battles up until the 20th century, but these were rare and never included high ranking churchmen like bishops; these later fighting priests also lacked the backing of the ecclesial body. The days of bold bishops like Odo who fought alongside a conqueror, or Adhemar who led a crusade and inspired his men to reclaim Jerusalem, or Amalric who was overcome with bloodlust and slaughtered a city, were all but over.
We have now observed the development of warrior bishops from a necessary phenomenon emerging in response to religious friction as Chrisitanity expanded, to the heroic leaders of the crusades, to the symbol of the Church’s overreach in the late middle ages. Now that a basic outline has been sketched of their development and decline, the question remains about what the modern inquirer should make of the phenomenon. Were these clerics sincere defenders of their faith, aiming to protect their flocks from physical and spiritual destruction, or were they merely tools of their political superiors, who used the clergymen to frame military ventures in religious terms in order to win support for their causes? It’s tempting to condemn outright many of the prelates who participated in the brutality of medieval warfare, but a wholesale condemnation might be overstepping fair judgment in light of the historical backdrop and circumstances surrounding these bishops’ actions.
The medieval era was a period of religious fanaticism. Christian, pagan, and Islamic worlds collided, igniting religious dissent that often spilled out into physical violence. The ethos of those early bishops who believed their spiritual duties involved protecting believers from physical attack was not so misguided – losing settlements to pagans or Muslims meant possibly damning future souls to hell. People who lived under non-Christian rule might miss Christ’s redemption since baptism and active participation in the Church were believed to be necessary to obtain salvation. Given this assumption, protecting Christendom, even through violence when necessary, was a moral imperative.
This moral imperative to protect, and expand when possible, Christ’s kingdom on earth justified the crusades. In the lead up to these holy wars, Christendom truly believed it was fighting for its survival. When Alexius Commennus wrote to the Holy Roman Emperor in 1093, he urged the West to “act while there is still time lest the kingdom of the Christians shall vanish from your sight…” Church authorities saw the taking up of arms as a legitimate redress for centuries of unchecked Islamic conquest. This becomes more clear when the reactionary nature of the crusades is understood – Christians weren’t conquering new lands from an isolationist civilization, but rather taking back previously held Christian lands from a culture dead set on conquering the known world. Cleric’s participation in the crusades should be understood in this context.
But what about Church teaching? Wasn’t clerical involvement in military service condemned, meaning that bishops and priests who took part in war actively disobeyed the Catholic Church, a church they supposedly were the stewards of? Though many priests did act directly in opposition to Church teaching, we should qualify this reality with an understanding of the way that conciliar documents would have been promulgated, and also with an understanding of church teaching that the average bishop would have had at the time.
The first warrior bishops arose before the Church had clear, official teachings on the practice of clerical warfare – these early bishops were likely the inspiration for the prohibition in the first place. Bishops like Germanus shouldn’t be culpable for disobeying teachings that had not yet been promulgated. Instead, their decisions should be interpreted through a prudential lens: was the warfare they engaged in just according to the contemporaneous Church teaching? This question opens up near endless complexities regarding Just War Theory – a teaching that was in its infancy in the early middle ages. For now, it is sufficient to say that a rigid condemnation of these early warrior bishops would be misguided considering the lack of established doctrine to guide their decisions.
Later fighting clerics present a different case, though again we are confronted with a complex situation. In the 5th century, the Council of Chalcedon explicitly forbade clergy from joining militaries. Afterword, several more councils and papal documents only reinforced this teaching [3]. A question remains, however, about how knowledgeable the average medieval bishop would have been about this prohibition, or more specifically, how knowledgeable the bishops who chose to fight were about it. Medieval bishops, especially those in remote locations, may not have had access to every single church declaration, and therefore could be oblivious to established doctrine. It’s entirely conceivable that several warrior bishops had little knowledge about the rulings of these councils.
Whether or not every bishop was up-to-date on the latest conciliar declaration is speculation, but what is more transparent is that there was no universal opinion at the time regarding their military involvement despite the Church’s prohibitions. In Kaeuper’s Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry, he writes:
“…There was more than one opinion. Inconveniently, clerics did not speak with one voice on so complex or troubling a set of topics as war and violence. Canonists, scholastic theologians, crusade preachers, priests hearing confessions – all could sustain their own arguments based on deep principles or informed by pragmatism. What we so readily term “the church” scarcely represented a monolithic body of thought…”
Even soldiers who fought alongside bishops sometimes questioned their martial authority – Bishop Anthony Bek, who fought alongside William Wallace in the early 14th century, was challenged once by a knight: “It is not your office to instruct us in the art of war; to thy Mass, Bishop.” [17].
What should be emphasized is the pragmatic nature of the decisions made by fighting prelates. They were making “boots-on-the-ground” decisions, often with little guidance from the Church hierarchy. We shouldn’t assume they never had in mind the best interests of their flocks. This, of course, does not excuse the more egregious examples of violence – there are limits that every priest and bishop would have known – however we must understand these decisions were made in an environment where violence was an everyday occurance and truly civilization-ending threats brooded across every border of Christendom.
The warrior bishops of the middle ages will continue to captivate – and mystify – history buffs and theologians alike because of their precarious position between holy man and brute, between godliness and savagery. Their rise and downfall reveals the complicated questions and difficult geopolitical tensions that emerged as Christianity grew from an obscure Jewish cult to the most powerful institution in the West. Their study is in many ways a microcosm of the larger issues at play in the medieval world.
Sources
(2) https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-27/controversial-constantine.html
(3)https://theses.gla.ac.uk/2671/1/2010gerrardphd.pdf
(4) http://www.vortigernstudies.org.uk/artsou/constex.htm
(5) Ephesians 6:12 KJV
(7) Becker, Jordan, 2016, Warrior Bishops: The Development of the Fighting Clergy under the Ottonians in the Tenth Century
(8)Whitelock, Dorothy, ed. (1979) [1st edition 1955]. English Historical Documents, Volume 1, c. 500–1042 (2nd ed.). London, UK: Routledge. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-415-14366-0.
(9)https://www.worldhistory.org/Odo_of_Bayeux/
(10) Book Title: The Social Structure of the First Crusade Book Author(s): Conor Kostick Published by: Brill Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h1gw.6
(11) https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=hist_etds
(12)Peter of les Vaux de Cernay (1998) [1212–1218]. Sibly, W.A.; Sibly, M.D. (eds.). The History of the Albigensian Crusade: Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay’s Historia Albigensis. Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 0-85115-807-2.
(13) Sibly, W. A.; Sibly, M. D. (2003). The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens: The Albigensian Crusade and Its Aftermath. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, UK: The Boydell Press. pp. 127–128. ISBN 9780851159256.
(14) “Dialogus Miraculorum – Page 308”. AHOM (in French). Archived from the original on 2012-02-20.
(15) https://www.jstor.org/stable/48578211?read-now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents
(16) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-II
(17) https://www.durhamworldheritagesite.com/learn/history/prince-bishops/anthony-bek