Fields of Blood

by Karen Armstrong

  17. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 51–58.

  18. Constantine, in Optatus, appendix 9, cited in Gaddis, There Is No Crime, p. 57.

  19. Richard Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA, 1995).

  20. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150–750 (London, 1989 ed.), pp. 86–89.

  21. James B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2007), pp. 13–20.

  22. Genesis 18:1–17; Exodus 33:18–23, 34:6–9; Joshua 5:13–15.

  23. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1:The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (Chicago and London, 1971), p. 145.

  24. Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelium (Proof of the Gospel) (Kindle ed., 2010), 5–6, Preface 1–2.

  25. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (London and Boston, 1988), p. 236.

  26. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, cited in Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (Oxford, 1981), p. 78.

  27. John Meyndorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York and London, 1975), p. 78.

  28. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, p. 90.

  29. Evelyne Patlagean, Pauvreté économique et pauvreté sociale à Byzance, 4e—7 e siècles (Paris, 1977), pp. 78–84.

  30. Matthew 6:25.

  31. Matthew 4:20; Acts 4:35.

  32. Matthew 19:21.

  33. Athanasius, Vita Antonii 3.2, in The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. R. C. Gregg (New York, 1980).

  34.David Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2002), p. 25.

  35. 2 Thessalonians 3:6–12.

  36. Athanasius, Vita, 50:4–6.

  37. H. I. Bell, V. Martin, E. G. Turner, and D. van Berchem, The Abinnaeus Archive (Oxford, 1962), pp. 77, 108.

  38. A. E. Boak and H. C. Harvey, The Archive of Aurelius Isidore (Ann Arbor, MI, 1960), pp. 295–96.

  39. Brown, Making of Late Antiquity, pp. 82–86.

  40. Matthew 6:34.

  41. Brown, Body and Society, pp. 218–21.

  42. Evagrius Ponticus, Praktikos 9, in Evagrius Ponticus: The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, trans. J. E. Bamberger (Kalamazoo, MI, 1978).

  43. Olympios 2, 313d—316a, Sayings of the Desert Fathers, in J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Gracca (PG) (Paris, 1800–1875).

  44. Brown, Making of Late Antiquity, pp. 88–90.

  45. Poemen 78, PG 65. 352cd, in Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

  46. Ibid., 60; PG 65:332a.

  47. Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York and Oxford, 1993), pp. 261–83.

  48. Brown, Body and Society, p. 215; World of Late Antiquity, p. 98.

  49. Athanasius, Vita, pp. 92–93.

  50. Macarius 32; PG 65:273d, in Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

  51. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, pp. 93–94.

  52. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, p. 278.

  53. Hilary of Poitiers, Against Valerius and Ursacius 1:2:6, in Hilary of Poitiers: Conflicts of Conscience and Law in the Fourth-Century Church, trans. Lionel R. Wickham (Liverpool, UK, 1997).

  54. Athanasius, History of the Arians 81, in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (NPNF), trans. and ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 14 vols. (Edinburgh, 1885).

  55. Athanasius, Apology Before Constantius 33, NPNF.

  56. Genesis 14:18–20.

  57. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 89–97.

  58. Ibid., p. 93.

  59. Socrates, History of the Church, 3:15, NPNF.

  60. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 93–94; cf. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley, CA, 2000), pp. 190–218.

  61. Harold A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, 2000), pp. 431–36.

  62. Brown, Power and Persuasion, pp. 34–70.

  63. G. W. Bowerstock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, MI, 1990), pp. 2–5, 35–40, 72–81; Brown, Power and Persuasion, pp. 134–45.

  64. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 6.6, PG 35:728, cited in Brown, Power and Persuasion, p. 50.

  65. Brown, Power and Persuasion, pp. 123–26.

  66. Raimundo Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man (Maryknoll, NY 1973), pp. 46–67.

  67. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 251–82.

  68. Eusebius, The History of the Church, 6:43, 5–10.

  69. Palladius, Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom, 20.561–71, trans. Robert T. Meyer (New York, 1985).

  70. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, p. 16.

  71. Hilary of Poitiers, Against Valerius and Ursacius, 1:2:6.

  72.Patlagean, Pauvreté économique, pp. 178–81, 301–40.

  73. Peter Garnsey, Famine and Food Shortage in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge, UK, 1988), pp. 257–68.

  74. E. W. Brooks, The Sixth Book of the Select Letter of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, 1.9 (London, 1903), cited in Brown, Power and Persuasion, p. 148; Brown, World of Late Antiquity, p. 110.

  75. Sozomen, History of the Church, 6:33:2, NPNF.

  76. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 242–50.

  77. Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks, pp. 125–49. Cf. I Thessalonians 5:17.

  78. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 94–97.

  79. Libanius, Oration 30:8–9, in Libanius: Select Orations, ed. and trans. A. F. Norman, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1969, 1977).

  80. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, p. 249.

  81. Ambrose, Epistle 41, cited ibid., pp. 191–96.

  82. Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, AD 100–400 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1984), p. 99.

  83. Rufinus, History of the Church 11.22, in The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia, trans. Philip R. Amidon (Oxford, 1997).

  84. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, p. 250.

  85. Ibid., pp. 99–100.

  86. MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, p. 119.

  87. Augustine, Letters, 93:5:17, NPNF.

  88. Augustine, The City of God, 18:54, in MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, p. 100.

  89. Peter Brown, “Religious Dissent in the Later Roman Empire: The Case of North Africa,” History 46 (1961); Brown, “Religious Coercion in the Later Roman Empire: The Case of North Africa,” History 48 (1963); Gaddis, There Is No Crime, p. 133.

  90. Augustine, Letter 47:5, NPNF.

  91. Augustine, Against Festus, 22:74, NPNF.

  92. Augustine, Letter 93:6, NPNF.

  93. Augustine, One the Free Choice of the Will, 9:1:5, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, 1993).

  94. Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, pp. 7–8.

  95. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 283–89.

  96. Nestorius, Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (Oxford, 1925), pp. 199–200.

  97. Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica 7:32, NPNF.

  98. Palladius, Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom, 20:579.

  99. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 292–310.

  100. Letter of Theodosius to Bausama, May 14, 449, cited ibid., p. 298.

  101. Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, cited ibid., p. 156n.

  102. Nestorius, Bazaar of Heracleides, pp. 482–83.

  103. Gaddis, There Is No Crime, pp. 310–27.

  104. John Meyendorff, “The Role of Christ, I: Christ as Saviour in the East,” in Jill Raitt, Bernard McGinn, and John Meyendorff, eds., Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York, 1987), pp. 236–37.

  105. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, pp. 213–15.

  106. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, pp. 166–68.

  107. Khosrow I, cited ibid., p. 166.

  108. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, pp. 160–65; Brown, Rise of Western Christend
om, pp. 173–74.

  109. Maximus, Ambigua 42, cited in Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p. 164.

  110. Maximus, Letter 2: On Love, 401D.

  111.Maximus, Centuries on Love 1:61, cited in Andrew Lowth, Maximus the Confessor (London, 1996), pp. 39–40; Matthew 5:44; I Timothy 2:4.

  112. Meyndorff, Byzantine Theology, pp. 212–22.

  7 ♦ THE MUSLIM DILEMMA

  1. I have discussed the career of Muhammad and the history of Arabia in more detail in Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (London and New York, 2006).

  2. Muhammad A. Bamyeh, The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse (Minneapolis, 1999), pp. 11–12.

  3. Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an (Montreal and Kingston, ON, 2002), pp. 29, 46.

  4. R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge, UK, 1953), pp. 83, 28–45.

  5. Bamyeh, Social Origins of Islam, p. 38.

  6. Genesis 16, 17:25, 21:8–21.

  7. Quran 5:69, 88:17–20.

  8. Quran 3:84–85.

  9. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford, 1953), p. 68.

  10. Quran 90:13–17.

  11. Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts, p. 28.

  12. Ibid., pp. 68–69; Quran 14:47, 39:37, 15:79, 30:47, 44:16.

  13. Quran 25:63, in The Message of the Quran, trans. Muhammad Asad (Gibraltar, 1980).

  14. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad’s Mecca: History of the Quran (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 25.

  15. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford, 1956), pp. 173–231.

  16. Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, in The Life of Muhammad, trans. and ed. A. Guillaume (London, 1955), p. 232.

  17. Watt, Muhammad at Medina, pp. 6–8; Bamyeh, Social Origins of Islam, pp. 198–99; Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago and London, 1974), pp. 1:75–76.

  18. Quran 29:46.

  19. Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford, 2006), p. 193.

  20. Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (London, 1983), pp. 247–55; Tor Andrae, Muhammad: The Man and His Faith, trans. Theophil Menzel (London, 1936), pp. 215–15; Watt, Muhammad at Medina, pp. 46–59; Bamyeh, Social Origins of Islam, pp. 222–27.

  21. Quran 48:26, cited in Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts, p. 31.

  22. Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, 751, cited in Guillaume, Life of Muhammad. Cf. Quran 110.

  23. Paul L. Heck, “Jihad Revisited,” Journal of Religious Ethics 32, no.1 (2004); Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, pp. 21–22.

  24. Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, p. 25; Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford and New York, 1999), pp. 42–45.

  25. Quran 16:135–28.

  26. Quran 22:39–41, 2:194, 2:197.

  27. Quran 9:5.

  28. Quran 8:61.

  29. Quran 9:29.

  30. Firestone, Jihad, pp. 49–50.

  31. Quran 15:94–95, 16:135.

  32.Quran 2:190, 22:39–45.

  33. Quran 2:191, 2:217.

  34. Quran 2:191, 9:5, 9:29.

  35. Firestone, Jihad, pp. 50–65.

  36. Quran 2:216, Asad translation.

  37. Quran 9:38–39, in The Qur’an: A New Translation, trans. M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford, 2004).

  38. Quran 9:43, ibid.

  39. Quran 9:73–74, 63:1–3.

  40. Quran 2:109, Abdel Haleem translation; cf. 50:59.

  41. Quran 5:16, ibid.

  42. Firestone, Jihad, pp. 73, 157.

  43. Quran 9:5, Abdel Haleem translation.

  44. Quran 2:193, in Firestone, Jihad, p. 85.

  45. Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, NJ, 1993), pp. 140–42.

  46. John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London and New York, 1993), pp. 195–96.

  47. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150–750 (London, 1989), p. 193.

  48. Hadith reported by Muthir al Ghiram, Shams ad-Din Suyuti, and al Walid ibn Muslim, cited in Guy Le Strange, Palestine Under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from AD 650 to 1500 (London, 1890), pp. 139–43; Tabari, Tarikh ar-Rasul wa’l Muluk, 1:2405; Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634–1099, trans. Ethel Broido (Cambridge, UK, 1992), pp. 70–72, 143–48, 636–38.

  49. “Book of Commandments,” quoted in Gil, History of Palestine, p. 71.

  50. Michael the Syrian, History 3.226, quoted in Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom in Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London, 1972), p. 216.

  51. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, AD 200–1000 (Oxford and Malden, MA, 1996), p. 185; Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, p. 56.

  52. Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, pp. 64–89; 168–69.

  53. David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2005), pp. 22–24.

  54. Ibid., pp. 13–19; Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, pp. 46–54; Firestone, Jihad, pp. 93–99.

  55. Jan Wensinck, Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane, 5 vols. (Leiden, 1992), 1:994, 5:298.

  56. Al-Hindi, Kanz (Beirut, 1989), 4:P:282 n. 10,500; Cook, Understanding Jihad, p. 18.

  57. Ibn Abi Asim, Jihad (Medina, 1986), 1:140–41 n. 11.

  58. Wensinck, Concordance, p. 2:212; Suliman Bashear, “Apocalyptic and Other Materials on Early Muslim—Byzantine Wars,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, vol. 1, no. 2 (1991).

  59. Wensinck, Concordance, p. 4:344; Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, p. 51.

  60. Wensinck, Concordance, 2:312.

  61. Cook, Understanding Jihad, pp. 23–25.

  62. Ibn al-Mubarak, Kitab al-Jihad (Beirut, 1971), pp. 89–90 n. 105; Cook, Understanding Jihad, p. 23.

  63. Abu Daud, Sunan III, p. 4 n. 2484, in Cook, Understanding Jihad.

  64. Quran 3:157, 3:167.

  65. Muhammad b. Isa al-Tirmidhi, Al-jami al-sahih, ed. Abd al-Wahhab Abd al-Latif, 5 vols. (Beirut, n.d), 3:106, cited in David Cook, “Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic History,” in Andrew R. Murphy, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence (Chichester, UK, 2011), pp. 283–84.

  66. Ibn al-Mubarak, Jihad, pp. 63–64 n. 64, cited in Cook, Understanding Jihad, p. 26.

  67. Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, pp. 119–20.

  68. Ibid., pp. 125–26; Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 1:216; John L. Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (Oxford, 2002), pp. 41–42.

  69. Al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, pp. 68–69. The Umayyads learned this lore from the Lakhmid Arab dynasty, who had been clients of Persia. Timothy H. Parsons, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fail (Oxford, 2010), pp. 79–80.

  70. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, pp. 201–2.

  71. Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier (New Haven, CT, 1996), pp. 99–106.

  72. Abu Nuwas, Diwan, 452, 641, cited in Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, p. 129.

  73. Ibid., pp. 127–31.

  74. Ibid., pp. 99–110.

  75. Peter Partner, God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam (London, 1997), p. 51.

  76. Ibn al-Mubarak, Jihad, p. 143 n. 141; Al Bayhagi, Zuhd (Beirut, n.d.), p. 165 n. 273, cited in Cook, Understanding Jihad, p. 35.

  77. Parsons, Rule of Empires, p. 77; Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, p. 89; Hodgson, Venture of Islam, 1:305.

  78. Al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, p. 239; Hodgson, Venture of Islam, pp. 444–45.

  79. Hodgson, Venture of Islam, pp. 315–54.

  80. Ibid., p. 317; Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History, pp. 92–93; Cook, Understanding Jihad, p. 21.

  81. Hodgson, Venture of Islam, p. 323.

  82. Sunni Muslims form the majority, basing their lives on the sunnah, or “customary practice,” of the Prophet.

  83. It was called the Fatimid Empire because, like all
Shiis, Ismails revere Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, the wife of Ali, and the mother of Husain.

  84. Bernard Lewis, The Assassins (London, 1967); Edwin Burman, The Assassins: Holy Killers of Islam (London, 1987).

  8 ♦ CRUSADE AND JIHAD

  1. H. E. J. Cowdrey, “Pope Gregory VII’s ‘Crusading’ Plans of 1074,” in B. Z. Kedar, H. E. Mayer, and R. C. Smail, eds., Outremer (Jerusalem, 1982).

  2. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London, 1986), pp. 17–22.

  3. Joseph R. Strager, “Feudalism in Western Europe,” in Rushton Coulborn, ed., Feudalism in History (Hamden, CT, 1965), p. 21; Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2005), pp. 334–35; John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London and New York, 1993), pp. 283, 289.

  4. Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150–750 (London, 1989), p. 134.

  5. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983), pp. 187, 245.

  6. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, AD 200–1000 (Oxford and Malden, MA, 1996), pp. 254–57.

  7. Ibid., pp. 276–302.

  8. Einard, “Life of Charlemagne,” in Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, UK, 1969), p. 67.

  9. Karl F. Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300–1140 (Princeton, NJ, 1969), p. 378.

  10. Rosamund McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 751–987 (London and New York, 1983), p. 62.

  11. Brown, World of Late Antiquity, pp. 134–35.

  12. Alcuin, Letter 174, cited in R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (New York, 1990), p. 2:32.

  13. This letter was actually written for him by Alcuin. Epistle 93 in Wallace-Hadrill, Frankish Church, p. 186.

  14. Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, p. 281.

  15. Talal Asad, “On Discipline and Humility in Medieval Christian Monasticism,” in Genealogies of Religion, Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore and London, 1993), p. 148.

  16. Ibid., pp. 130–34.

  17. Southern, Western Society and the Church, pp. 217–24.

  18. Georges Duby, “The Origins of a System of Social Classification,” in Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (London, 1977), p. 91.