First Advisor

John S. Ott

Term of Graduation

Winter 2022

Date of Publication

3-16-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in History

Department

History

Language

English

Subjects

Cluniacs -- Attitudes, Just war doctrine, War (Philosophy), Monasticism and religious orders -- History -- Middle Ages (600-1500)

DOI

10.15760/etd.7780

Physical Description

1 online resource (viii, 160 pages)

Abstract

The goal of this project is to isolate Cluniac attitudes towards violence and the use of martial force in the tenth through twelfth centuries, first by determining in what situations Cluniac authors deemed the shedding of human blood was permissible, and second by tracking the evolution of these attitudes from the abbey's foundation to the height of its influence. Given Cluny's role in European society, there is a rich and longstanding body of scholarship which examines Cluny's support or rejection of force as a means of conflict resolution. This study demonstrates a consistency over time in Cluniac attitudes on the motivations and limitations of violence which governed warfare in Europe, leading eventually to the codification in Cluniac texts of acceptable uses of force, and establishing a clear pathway to salvation for the warrior caste whose lives and fortunes revolved around being effective in the execution of warfare. This thesis employed a combination of corpus linguistics and word embedding as its primary methodology. The usage frequency of a list of twenty-four Latin roots relating to concepts of warfare, violence, use of force, justice, and power was determined in order to identify and quantify the use of martial language in Cluniac texts of a variety of genres (legal texts, hagiography, history, sermons, and poetry). The opportunities for greater understanding of historical texts are almost limitless as scholars explore ways to use these exciting new interpretive methods.

The patterns of target root occurrence strongly imply a distinctly Cluniac culture in the manner in which Cluniac authors thought about violence which does not appear to be fully in line with existing scholarship. Cluny's message was not about eye-for-an-eye equivalency, or Christ's vengeance on wrongdoers, but the salvation of all mankind. This result makes sense, both spiritually and pragmatically, as it was only fair that those Christian knights and rulers who fought and protected others--so long as they followed the rules for the just and justifiable use of force--should not be excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven. The results provide a way to draw back the curtain of public speech to reveal the thought patterns behind it and to quantify our subjective understanding of these texts. In seeking to understand the mentalities and motivations of the producers of the historical record, whether a sermon intended to give warriors hope for salvation or a public address to discuss the response to a global pandemic, word choice, as this thesis demonstrates, matters.

Rights

© 2021 Amanda K. Swinford

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/37343

Additional Files
Linguistic analysis 10th c. 130222.csv (2 kB)
Linguistic analysis 10th c.
Linguistic analysis 11th c. 130222.csv (2 kB)
Linguistic analysis 11th c.
Linguistic analysis 12th c. 130222.csv (3 kB)
Linguistic analysis 12th c.
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