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+--- Thread: Keys (/Thread-Keys)
RE: Keys - irukandji - 01-10-2022
Renard's version does not agree with Kelly's. There's nothing in his version that says the Grimms worked for the royals. Furthermore, if they did, why then would the royals send them away to Constantinople? If they really owned wesen as slaves and needed Grimms to keep them in line, the last thing the royals would be doing is sending the controllers into battle.
RE: Keys - FaceInTheCrowd - 01-10-2022
Renard's version doesn't contain all the same details as Kelly's, but it doesn't say anything that contradicts hers.
The royals used grimms to control wesen soldiers who fought for them (if they also used grimms as overseers of slave labor, this was never mentioned on the series, though it's easy to see why modern grimms wouldn't want to talk about that). This was a practice that dated back to the Roman Empire. The royals would have sent troops to the Crusades when the Church called upon them to participate, because the Church was basically the superpower of the day. When the Pope called upon rulers and wealthy merchants to fund Crusades and cathedrals, they all ponied up.
RE: Keys - irukandji - 01-10-2022
But this still doesn't explain why the royals would part with valuable Grimms. It also doesn't explain why they would send wesen, who couldn't be controlled to a war simply because the Pope ordered it. Once the wesen got out of sight, they'd be gone, and 7 Grimms aren't going to be able to keep them in line. There's also the question of, just how does a Grimm make a wesen fight?
The only way this could work is that, you have to assume that both Grimms and wesen were Christian. You also have to assume that they believed in fighting for Jerusalem for the Christians. Finally you have to assume that they gladly changed tactics and were willing to to fight/pillage/loot for a debt owed money to Venice, In short, they were willing to betray their principles. So they'd do anything to for greed, sack Constantinople, kill fellow Christians, and break their promise to bring back treasure to the royals.
The Pope actually sanctioned a Crusade to Jerusalem. He did not sanction the sack of Constantinople. When he found out what happened with Constantinople, he excommunicated all of the knights who participated. The knights also had a choice of going to Constantinople of continuing to Jerusalem.
RE: Keys - FaceInTheCrowd - 01-10-2022
In the Middle Ages, the Church pretty much told everyone what to do, including royals. If you didn't go along, you could be excommunicated (getting a free pass out of going to hell was a really big motivating factor in those days). Or, the Church could order others who were more cooperative than you to send soldiers to bring you down. If you were a vassal and your lord conscripted you for battle, you went or your family could be forced off the lord's land to starve. And presumably if you were wesen and your lord ordered you to battle, you went or the grimms cut off your head (hence their original decapitare name). And the wesen soldiers probably also had families the lords could punish for their disobedience. That's in addition to the possibility that the human and wesen sent to fight were also Christian and wanted to not go to hell.
How grimms controlled wesen soldiers is a good question. Could be the grimms didn't do all the beheading themselves and had non-grimm troops they directed when necessary. Or maybe wesen, like everyone else in those days, simply had very few options in life other than serving their lords as directed and mostly did as they were told. Peasant uprisings in Europe don't seem to show up in history until the 14th century. I wonder if the royals no longer having grimms working for them might have had anything to do with that?
According to Wikipedia, the Pope excommunicated the crusaders after they sacked the Christian city of Zara in 1202 and ordered them to resume their crusade to Jerusalem. Then, in 1203, the crusaders made a deal with a Byzantine prince to restore his deposed father as emperor of Constantinople, after which they would receive aid to continue on to Jerusalem (and presumably get un-excommunicated). But the newly restored emperor was promptly assassinated, so in 1204 the crusaders sacked Constantinople. They may have intended to use the plunder to go on to Jerusalem, but if so, that plan fell through. There doesn't seem to be any information about what the crusaders did after that, or what happened when they eventually returned home. There is also some doubt as to whether any of the Pope's instructions were actually delivered to the crusaders, so they may never have known that what they were doing was not sanctioned by the Church; lying to your troops about what they're fighting for is apparently not just a modern thing.
RE: Keys - irukandji - 01-10-2022
In the history I looked at, there was nothing to indicate the Pope excommunicated anyone from refusing to go to the crusades. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but with regard to the fourth crusade, it appears he never threatened it. In fact, the leaders of the fourth crusade expected more men then they got. That tells me the Pope's decree fell on some deaf ears. There were men who also left the crusade when they found out they were going to Constantinople. It was a Christian city and the Pope threatened excommunication and forbade attacking a Christian city. The crusaders didn't listen to him then, either, and attacked and sacked the city. I could find nothing showing where the Pope excommunicated the crusaders for going to Constantinople, although I found a couple of articles stating that one of the modern popes in the 2000's apologized for the sack, and the Latin church was forgiven.
Wesen had been around for some time, and if we judge them by the way they appear in the series, it appears most of them just wanted to live as citizens and no cause undo attention to themselves. This would have been the same back in the middle ages. Probably more so, as life was extremely difficult back then. I tend to think, like the diaries, the page Kelly saw was probably exaggerated to great effect to make Grimms look more upstanding than they actually were.
RE: Keys - FaceInTheCrowd - 01-10-2022
Fear of excommunication my have been more of a perception on the part of people who were on the receiving end of papal asks than overt threats. Or, the Church may have more commonly gotten what it wanted by offering extra blessings or other favors. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if some nobles sent a very small number of knights and troops and said it was all they had availalbe.
The Pope excommunicated the crusaders who attacked the first Christian city, Zara, after it happened. The excommunication also ordered that those crusaders continue on to Jerusalem, so presumably the carrot that went with the stick was, complete the original mission and be welcomed back into the fold. There wouldn't have been any point in excommunicating them again for sacking Constantinople. And, of course, the crusaders who refused to attack Zara wouldn't have been excommunicated at all. I wonder whether those folks went on to Jerusalem or if they just quit the crusade and went home.
I agree that most wesen of the period probably just wanted to get along. But in the 13th century, royals, clergy and merchant classes were exclusive clubs and for the majority of the population getting along meant being a peasant farmer, tradesman or soldier subject to the rule of some member of the nobility.
RE: Keys - irukandji - 01-10-2022
That's correct. However, the pope forgave the excommunication on Zadar (or Zara), so the crusaders could continue the crusade. The crusaders did not continue the crusade, but diverted to Constantinople. The pope did not learn of the attack until after the city had been sacked. He condemned the attack. It appears he may have excommunicated the crusaders for the attack as well so I was wrong on that. If the crusaders went on to Jerusalem, they were on their own. They did not have papal sanction to do so.
By the sack of Constantinople, the crusades had been going on for some time. The Pope's decree may have been ignored in part, or perhaps the towns just didn't have the men to spare.
What I wonder is how the treasure ended up in the hands of these seven men to begin with. The way Renard talks, it almost sounds like the treasure was going to the royals, and somehow the Grimms deceived them in order to take it. From what I read on the subject, the treasures were either looted from holy places in Constantinople or destroyed.
RE: Keys - FaceInTheCrowd - 01-10-2022
If I read the history correctly, the Pope excommunicated the crusaders after Zara and ordered them to return to their vows and go to Jerusalem. So forgiveness would have been dependent upon them actually doing that, and at the time they sacked Constantinople they would still not have been forgiven. The second unauthorized sacking, followed by not going on to the official target, should have left them permanently excised from the Church.
Officially, the objective of the Fourth Crusade was to bring Muslim Jerusalem under Christian rule. I suspect that looting any city, Christian or Muslim, was not openly sanctioned by the Church (though who knows what was unofficially ignored). Bringing loot home to the royal patrons would probably have been an off-the-books side job.
I wonder whether the crusaders actually thought they were funding their continuing mission to Jerusalem in Constantinople or if by then they had just gone rogue and were in it only for themselves. I don't recall either Kelly or Renard ever saying that the knights were pious Christians motivated by their faith.
RE: Keys - irukandji - 01-10-2022
I don't think so. The pope learned of the attack on Zadar before it even occurred. He did not give his consent for the attack and he threatened excommunication. He did excommunicate them but it was obvious the excommunication had no effect. I think he lifted it for practical reasons. If you notice, the pope himself never once offered to pay for the crusade he started. He wanted the crusade to go on so he lifted the excommunication, which would have taken effect immediately.
I actually think the crusaders would have continued on to Jerusalem, had they received the funds they were promised by the Byzantine claimant to the throne. It also appears he would have paid them, had he not been murdered first. It was the subsequent ruler and the people of Constantinople itself who escalated the situation by turning against the crusaders.
RE: Keys - FaceInTheCrowd - 01-10-2022
There's probably no way the sack of Constantinople could be rationalized. Even if the restored emperor hadn't been killed and had handed the crusaders the support they were promised to get to Jerusalem, putting him back in power was overthrowing one Christian ruler for another, which was not supposed to be on the Church's program.
The Wikipedia entry for Zara says the Pope sent an order forbidding the attack and threatening excommunication before the attack, Zara fell in 1202, and the excommunications happened in 1203. It does say that the Pope granted forgiveness to the non-Venetians later that year and instructed them to resume there original mission to Jerusalem. So if you were a crusader from Venice, you were apparently still SOL. But it doesn't say anything about the Church punishing anyone for Constantinople, which suggests that either the Pope wasn't really all that bothered by it or by then he had realized that excommunication didn't really have teeth.