The Crusaders and Knights, the past is our present

[iyah360]

I want to start a thread that will pertain to the crusaders and various offshoots of the "middle ages" that very much reflect a similar drive of today's U.S./European designs on the "middle east" and elsewhere. The present does not maintain itself in a vaccuum and what we are witnessing today is part of a several centuries old impulse that has not died out and is in fact very much influencing and directing current world affairs.

[iyah360]

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[iyah360]

http://www.astonisher.com/archives/corporation/corporation_ch2.html

"THE MAN WE CALL St. Benedict lived at one of the break points in history, where the current of human affairs seems to accelerate and compress great change into an individual lifetime.

Benedict was born in Nursia about 490 during the reign of Odovacar, who deposed the last Roman Emperor; in his boyhood he witnessed the victories of Theodoric; in his manhood he enjoyed the peace of the Ostrogoth kingdom; and in his old age he saw the destruction of the Gothic Wars and the descent into the Dark Ages.

Benedict's upbringing was in many ways classically Roman. He was sent to Rome for schooling when the city was still the jewel of antiquity. Alaric and Gaiseric had left their marks, but great buildings like the Forum were still in use, the aqueducts had not yet been cut, and the populace still enjoyed the thermæ. Boethius and last pagan philosophers still illuminated the City of Light, and the Roman Imperial bureaucracy still administered.

Yet Roman political and cultural power was clearly waning. Not only did the old Imperial bureaucracy serve barbarian conquerors, but foreign cultural attributes jostled shoulder to shoulder with their traditional counterparts. Many eastern cults – such as the ancient Egyptian one dedicated to the worship of Serapis at Memphis – spread to Rome, while Christianity replaced the pagan cults as the state religion.

There is some suggestion that Benedict, who was “of goodish birth,” may have begun studying law in Rome as a young man. He quickly became alarmed at the degeneracy of the city, however, “and drew back the foot which he had set on the threshold of life.” Instead Benedict chose to follow the path of the religious anchorite and cenobite, “singing Psalms, studying, fasting, praying, rejoicing in the hope of the life to come.”

St. Athanasius is often credited with introducing monasticism to the West, but actually the movement was the work of unknown thousands. As the Roman flame began to sputter and fail, many ardent souls concluded that it was impossible to live in the world without being contaminated by its wickedness. So men and woman both began to seek out remote spots where they could lead holy lives, in the hope they might be among the few worthy souls chosen for eternal life at the hand of God.

A glimpse of this wave of societal auto-revulsion can be seen in the monastic population explosion in France during the early Middle Ages. There were eleven French monasteries founded during the fourth century, sixty in the fifth century, and two hundred eighty in the sixth century. Certain broad tendencies had begun to emerge in Christian monasticism by the fourth century when St. Basil first instituted the vow, but every cell still had its own rule, and hence there were as many rules as there were monasteries.

Benedict became intimately familiar with several of these during his early years as a saint in training. After leaving Rome, he went first to the town on Enfide, and then to a wild ravine along the Anio, which was impounded into two lakes behind dams built by Emperor Claudius. With the great pleasure palaces in ruin, the lakes of Subiaco presented a striking spot to contemplate the transient nature of earthly power. Here Benedict lived as a hermit and practiced disfiguring acts of sexual mortification which helped him win him a local reputation for holiness.


Soon Benedict was asked to become abbot of a nearby monastery, Vicovaro. The monks, whose previous abbot had died, hoped that Benedict could bring them some of his ardor, but it appears that they got far more than they bargained for. In his first religious command, Benedict proved a harsh master. “He was no complacent ruler,” wrote Pope Gregory, “who would suffer those under his charge to live as they liked, but rebuked severely such as he found indulging in practices which were inconsistent with their vocation.”

An uproar among the monks resulted, and Benedict was forced to move on to the old Roman town of Casinum on the Latin Way about 80 miles south of Rome, where he founded his own monastery, Monte Cassino. Ancient pagan rites were still practiced on the wooded hillside when Benedict arrived, but he smashed the idols and burned the sacred grove. As his final act of possession, he built an oratory to St. John where the altar of Apollo had stood.


It was at Monte Cassino that Benedict codified the insights of a lifetime seeking his God. The result was the most popular manual for corporate success ever written, the Benedictine Rule. “[T]his little rule for beginners” – hanc minimam inchoationis regulam – as Benedict called it, drew heavily from the writings of others, including St. Basil, St. Pachomius, St. Macarius, St. Orsiesius and Abbot John Cassian of Marseilles. His greatest debt, however, was to the anonymous The Rule of the Master, from which he took his celebrated chapters on the grades of humility verbatim.


Benedict also owed an obvious debt to secular Roman culture. This is particularly evident in his attitudes and assumptions about the social order. The Benedictine Rule is rife with concepts and language borrowed from Imperial Rome, including the fundamental idea of the corporation, which can be traced back to guilds of artisans and merchants under Numa Pompilius, the legendary king of Rome and successor to Romulus in the eighth century BC.


Called corpora or collegia, they were also employed by the ancient Romans for many civic tasks. Collegia fabrorum were fire fighting brigades, which sometimes bargained for the highest possible price before commencing their efforts. By the consulate of Cicero, they functioned in myriad forms, from social clubs to small trade guilds, which became nearly ubiquitous, and were licensed by the state from Emperor Augustus onwards. There are even records of substantial, semi capitalistic undertakings, like the Asiani (or Asia) Company with capital holding large enough to lend the government roughly $24 million in modern funds.


Such instances of large-scale corporate endeavor were relatively rare, however. Traditionally, Roman wealth and status were based on agriculture, which in the process of evolving from small free yeoman into large slave-driven latifundia, continued to produce the bulk of Roman revenues into the sixth century. As long as Roman cultural forces remained dominant within the empire, the evolution of the corporation was blocked, as was that of monasticism, which the worldly Roman sensibility found repugnant. As the Roman grip weakened, though, new possibilities arose, as St. Benedict of Nursia soon showed.


Like so many successful corporate men in the millennia since, St. Benedict was a synthesizer rather than an originator. He brought together disparate elements from the debris of classical culture, and fashioned from them something vital and new. Both corporations and monasteries were well known to the ancient world, of course, but it took Benedict of Nursia to successfully cross the two. One might compare the Roman use of corporations for social purposes to the Chinese use of gunpowder for fireworks. Actually, though, Benedict brought much more than a new application. He brought a small but revolutionary intellectual leap.


Again, all the raw materials were at hand long before the combination was discovered. By Benedict's time, the Catholic Church had long accepted the idea that the holy spirit could be embodied in physical objects. Christian liturgy was full of vessels of the holy spirit (the wafer, the wine, the monstrance, etc.). Benedict took this idea one step further. His vessel was not an object, but a group of people actively working the will of God in the world. In other words, he created vessel for God which was conceptual rather than physical, and active rather than inanimate.


More than that, he showed anyone who could read exactly how to achieve the same ends. The Benedictine Rule is a blueprint for incorporating the spirit of God. Hundreds of rules had been written before, but Benedict was the one who got it right. He was the first to craft a tolerable yoke for the corporation's human attendants and effectively harness their energies toward a collective goal. Before Benedict, the ideal of Christian asceticism was probably best expressed by St. Simeon Stylites, who spent 35 years living alone at the top of a narrow pillar. Benedict vanquished this ideal forever, and replaced it with the ideal of physical moderation and coordinated labor.


Written in clear but hardly classical Latin, the Benedictine Rule reveals its author to be fanatical yet clear headed, intolerant yet compassionate, and deeply fearful of personal freedom. Considering its lofty aim and overall martial tone, it is surprising how much shrewd humor the Rule contains. Concerning the doorkeepers, for instance, Benedict wrote that “at the door of the monastery shall be placed a wise old man who shall know how to receive a reply and return one,” adding that this should be a person “whose ripeness of age will not permit him to gossip.” The saint's wry voice can also be heard in the command that his monks “be instant in prayer... and not to wish to be called holy before being so.”


Inside the monastery, Benedict established the daily routine down to the smallest detail, even specifying that “no one shall be excused from kitchen work.” Judging that “idleness is the enemy of the soul,” Benedict filled his monks' time with prayer, manual labor, and study, each at determined hours. The basic task of monastic life was common prayer, which Benedict called the Opus Dei, or Work of God. The monks' day of worship began in the early morning darkness, around 2 a.m. in the winter, and around 3 a.m. in the summer, with the singing of the Office of Vigils or Nocturnes (later called Matins). Lauds was sung at the first flush of light in the eastern sky, and the day was closed with Compline.


What sets Benedict's rule apart from others, like The Rule of the Master, is his emphasis on work in general as a road to personal salvation. He especially extols work in the open air, laborare est orare, and physical work features in several of his miracles. Pope Gregory the Great described a how a Goth at the monastery lost the head off his ax in a lake. When Benedict heard of the accident, he took the handle and went to the lake shore. “Immediately the iron head rose from the bottom of the lake and attached itself again to the handle. Then Benedict returned the tool to the astonished Goth, with the encouraging words: 'there now, work on, and be sad no longer.'“


Benedict's monastery was a self-contained world with its own well, fields, mill, orchard, creek, fishpond, sheep stall, cow pasture, rabbitry and barns. The monks were forbidden to leave the monastery save on urgent business. Benedict wanted to isolate his monks in a Godly reverie, but he also wanted the monastery to provide certain services for the larger community, such as offering hospitality to all visitors and distributing alms to the poor. Interestingly, Benedict's sympathies extended to the businessman, as well. Gregory tells of man who came to Benedict needing 12 shillings to pay creditors. Benedict told him he did not have the money, but asked him to come back in two days. When the man did so, Benedict gave him thirteen, “saying that he might pay twelve, and have one to defray charges.”


The abbot – the chief executive officer or CEO in modern corporate argot – was the cornerstone of Benedict's monastic edifice. Elected for life by the members of the monastery, his power was virtually unlimited, except that it might not directly contradict the Rule. His selection was seen as the work of the Holy Spirit, expressly and fervently prayed for in the hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus (“Come down, Creator Spirit”). His instructions came as from God, and he was regarded as the representative of Jesus within his monastery. Complete, immediate and unquestioning obedience was due him by all his monks. To ensure this obedience, Benedict devoted twelve chapters of his Rule to faults against monastic discipline and their punishment. These ranged from verbal rebuke to whipping, or “stripes.”


Benedict's fundamental aim was to destroy the independence, and with it the individuality, of the monks, so that they could be merged into the greater corporate persona. “Let no one presume to give or receive anything without leave of the abbot, or retain anything as his own. He should have nothing at all,” the Benedictine Rule reads. “For indeed it is not allowed to the monks to have bodies or wills in their own power. But for all things necessary they must look to the abbot of the monastery.” Typically, Benedict spelled out in detail how these ends were to be achieved. “The monks' beds must be often searched by the abbot for the sake of private possessions, lest such be found,” he wrote. “If in any man's bed anything be found which he has not received from the abbot, let him be subjected to the severest discipline.”


St. Benedict was not as harsh physically as St. Columbanus, however, whose rule decreed that “the chief part of the monk's rule is mortification.” Benedict did not want his monks wasting their health to prove their holiness. He even allowed them wine, providing they “drink temperately and not to satiety.” In other respects, Benedict's rule was actually more severe than its predecessors. For instance, much heavier penalties were enacted against monks who broke their vows. Where before a monk who married was censured, now he was to be separated by force from his wife, and might be forcibly returned to his monastery and subjected to additional punishment.


And what emerged from all this rule giving? By loosening here and tightening there, Benedict crafted a corporation with more control over its members than had ever been possible before. Bound by irrevocable vows, separated from their parents and siblings, prevented from marrying or having offspring, denied any personal possessions or even the simplest expression of individuality, Benedict's monks became agents of another will. They devoted themselves to God, their own salvation, and the glory of their order, which merged into a new trinity of complete conviction.


As a result, Benedict's monks could be marshaled in ways that were impossible with secular laborers. Benedictines could be worked harder at less expense than even slaves, who grew despondent under a regime of sack cloth, whipping and enforced chastity. In a world growing more violent, treacherous and fragmented, this gave the Benedictines a very real advantage over their competition.


A sense of this struggle emerges from Benedict's language, which bristles with military terminology. “We must create a schola for the Lord's service,” Benedict wrote in his preface. In Rome, the term schola had originally referred to the hall or meeting place of a corporation, but it came to be associated with elite elements of the army, including the Emperor's body guard.


Benedict's dark view of his own times is evident in his prophesy that Rome itself would completely collapse, “worn out by tempest, lightning, whirlwind and earthquake and will decay in itself.” Benedict even prophesied that the object of his life's work, the monastery of Monte Cassino, would be destroyed.


One can almost feel Benedict bending all his efforts to create a stable craft that could survive the buffeting he saw ahead. Perhaps the greatest measure of his success is the fact that the Benedictine Order is today over 1500 years old, and has survived more than twice as long as the Roman Empire.


In the first thousand years of its existence, the order that Benedict founded gave the Catholic Church at least a dozen saints, 24 popes, 200 cardinals, 7,000 archbishops and 15,000 bishops, along with countless missionaries, teachers, writers and priests.


And the Benedictine Order's impact outside the Catholic Church has been even greater, for it kindled a flame that has engulfed the entire world. . . "

http://www.astonisher.com/archives/corporation/corporation_ch2.html

[iyah360]

http://www.astonisher.com/archives/corporation/corporation_ch7.html

"THE TWO GREAT armies met in Galilee near the town of Nazareth where Jesus Christ had preached his gospel of peace eleven centuries before.

A cloud of yellow banners fluttered above the largest Moslem force ever seen in the Holy Land, perhaps as many as 100,000 soldiers gathered for jihad, or holy war.

Against them marched a much smaller army of Crusaders, or Christian holy warriors. Although numbering only twenty thousand, the Crusaders possessed a sacred relic which they believed powerful enough to insure victory. King Guy of Jerusalem, their leader, carried a piece of wood purported to be from the “true cross.”

His opposite, Sultan Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and a Moslem saint, relied more on strategic planning. He lured the Christian army into the open by capturing the nearby city of Tiberius, where the Countess of Tripoli awaited the return of her Crusading husband Raymond in oleander scented gardens.

Raymond of Tripoli resisted taking Saladin's bait, though. An experienced desert warrior, he knew the devastating effects of a forced march in the shimmering summer heat. And by exposing their force in the open, he knew the Christians would essentially be betting the fate of Jerusalem on the outcome at Tiberius.


But the Count of Tripoli was only one voice at the Christian war council. King Guy also listened to the flamboyant freebooting rogue, Reginald of Chatillon. The Frankish lord of the citadel Krak des Chevaliers, Reginald had long harassed Moslems on the road to Mecca, and once even mounted a naval raiding party on the holy city of Islam.

The other who spoke with authority was dark Gerard de Ridefort, grand master of the Catholic Church's first military corporation, the Poor Knights of Christ, commonly called the Knights Templar. A hard and haughty man, de Ridefort fought not for riches, but for religion. He and his men were armed monks who slew to save their souls the way other monks prayed for theirs.

Founded in 1120 when Hugh de Payens and seven other Frankish knights banded together to protect Christian pilgrims en route to Jerusalem, the Templars soon assumed a larger mission. They and their many subsequent imitators – including the revamped Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights, Knights of Calatrava, and Knights of St. James of Compostella – became the standing army of the papacy.

In battle, especially in the early years, the Templars were renowned for their valor. They vowed to never retreat unless out-numbered by more than three-to-one, and there were battles, such as the Springs of Cresson, when they attacked Moslem forces more than 50 times their size. In one sea battle, the Templars sank one of their own ships, sacrificing 140 Christians because they knew they could take 1,500 Moslems down with them.

The Templars' bravery inspired the church and even many secular leaders to entrust their most valuable possessions to them, both for conveyance and simple safekeeping. Thus, as the Hospitallers evolved from a medical corps to armed combatants to pirates, the Templars evolved from warriors to couriers to bankers. Before the end of the century, English ecclesiastic Walter Map observed, “nowhere except at Jerusalem are they in poverty.”


The Templars' round churches, imitating the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, became the financial centers of northern Europe. In London and Paris, the Temples were used as the royal treasuries. The Templars' began making loans by the middle of the twelfth century, first to St. Louis and Pope Alexander III (who paid 5 percent interest), and ultimately to most of the crown heads of Europe, who it may be added listened to them with particular attention thereafter.
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In the Christian war council that was held on the night of July 2, 1187, Master Templar de Ridefort mocked Raymond of Tripoli's caution. King Guy typically took no action initially, but when de Ridefort returned to his tent secretly later that night, the king decided to attack Tiberius. Because of their mutual dislike for the Count of Tripoli, both King Guy and Master de Ridefort savored the prospect of rescuing the Countess of Tripoli over her husband's objections.


When the Crusaders marched out for battle their ranks were swelled by a large number of hasty conscripts. It was said that no one was left inside the walls of Acre except for old women and young children. The first day’s march progressed uneventfully, with the Crusdader army camping for the night at Saffuriyya. When the Crusaders arose on the morning of July 3, they thought they could reach Tiberius before the sun set that evening, but they never got that far.


Saladin's archers harried the Christian advance, while others in the Moslem force set brush fires upwind from the advancing Crusaders, forcing them to march all day in smoke and heat. Evening found the Crusaders barely half way to their goal. Exhausted and almost out of water, they halted in the midst of the desert on the lower plain of Esdraelon.


All night, the Moslem army kept up a furious drumming, preventing the Crusaders from sleeping. The Christians' foreboding increased with the swelling rhythms. Late that night someone rode through the camp crying out, “Alas, Lord God, the war is over; we are dead men! The kingdom is undone.”


When dawn came the Crusaders' worst fears were confirmed. They were entirely surrounded. Immediately the Christian knights ran for their steeds, but the Moslem archers were ready for them. Saladin's supply corps had already placed camel-loads of arrows at regular intervals, and now his archers used these caches to rain uninterrupted death on the Christian ranks. Many knights and their horses were killed before they ever got into action.


The parched Christian foot soldiers chose this moment to spontaneously attack. Inspired by the presence of their woody relic – and driven wild by the sight of the waters of Galilee glimmering in the distance – they broke ranks and charged Saladin's encircling ring in a wild wave. For six hours savage hand-to-hand combat raged, but not a single Frankish foot soldier got through. Finally, at midday King Guy and a contingent bearing the royal standard retreated into the hills – or horns – of Hattin to make their last stand.


It was near here that Jesus Christ supposedly preached the Sermon on the Mount. Modern authorities identify the mount as Karn Hattin a dozen miles or so northeast of Nazareth. Jesus’ message then was one of radical peace. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he said, adding emphatically, “Thou shall not kill.” And “Do not resist one who is evil, but if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also ... I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.”


Eleven centuries later, the din of Templar arms testified to how much corporate Catholicism had transformed the Christian creed. Where Jesus preached against violence, urging his followers to turn the other cheek, the corporate church sanctioned mass murder and waged holy war. Where Jesus condemned elaborate, public prayer, the corporate church made ritual prayer the centerpiece of religious observance, and arranged the schedule of monks so that it occupied half their waking hours.


Where Jesus preached the sanctity of poverty, the corporate church amassed stupendous wealth. Where Jesus said that a rich man can get into heaven about as easily as a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, the corporate church gave the rich a better chance of getting into heaven than the poor, because the rich could hire monks to pray for their souls. Where Jesus drove the money changers from the temple, the corporate church invited in usurious entities like the ironically named Poor Knights of Christ, or Templars."


http://www.astonisher.com/archives/corporation/corporation_ch7.html

[iyah360]

http://www.astonisher.com/archives/corporation/corporation_ch7.html

"In fact, if one believed the dogma of the Christian church, it would be easy to see the corporation as an expression of the spirit of Satan – rather than Jesus – since it has been the means by which so many of Christ's teachings have been subverted. Certainly this was the view of the Greek Orthodox Church. In response to clerical celibacy and other reforms of the Roman corporatocracy introduced to Catholicism by Saint Pope Leo IX and Hildebrand, Greek Orthodox Patriarch Michael Cerularius closed all Catholic churches in Constantinople in 1053, effectively launching the Great Schism.


Undeterred, St. Bernard, who composed the Knights' Templar Rule in 1128, bade the corporate soldiers of the Roman Church “wash seldom” and master the “true art of war.” The most influential churchman of the twelfth century, St. Bernard enthusiastically celebrated the genocidal soldier. “The Christian who slays the unbeliever in the Holy war,” Bernard promised the Templars, “is sure of his reward; more sure if he himself is slain. The Christian glories in the death of the pagan, because Christ is thereby glorified...”


The notion that they could commit murder and still go to heaven proved exceptionally alluring to contemporary Christians, then as now. Nor was St. Bernard bashful about ballyhooing the benefits. “O man of war, at last you have a cause for which you can fight without endangering your soul; a cause in which to win is glorious and for which to die is but gain. Are you a shrewd businessman, quick to see the profits of this world? If you are, I can offer you a bargain which you cannot afford to miss. Take the sign of the cross. At once you will have indulgence for all the sins.”


Pope Urban II had intended the chivalry of Europe to make up the First Crusade, but the endeavor soon attracted tens of thousands of common folk. Stirred by vagabond preachers like the Augustinian, Peter the Hermit, a series of spontaneous mass migrations set out for the Holy Land. Guibert de Nogent observed, “Nothing was more touching than to see these poor people using their cattle like horses, dragging along the roads in two-wheeled peasant carts, upon which they had piled their sorry belongings and their little children. At every castle, at every town which they passed, the children stretched out their hands and asked if it were not Jerusalem.”


Murderous outbreaks of anti-Semitism accompanied these pious wanderings, along with all manner of freelance pillaging and looting. Of the five large people's crusades that left Europe during 1096, only two got as far as the Middle East, and they were nearly annihilated by Turkish archers outside Niccea. The organized armies of the crusading European powers, which arrived in the Holy Land a little later, enjoyed much greater military success, capturing a string of important cities and finally sacking Jerusalem savagely in 1099. Predictably, though, the Christian barbarism provoked a Moslem response which reversed the conquests of the First Crusade, and prompted the Second Crusade.


Although once again the catalyst for widespread attacks on European Jews, the Second Crusade was a much different affair from the first, both in its leadership and composition. While the First Crusade had been the work of Cluny, proclaimed by a Cluniac pope and largely manned by recruits from Cluniac strongholds in France and Lorraine, the Second Crusade was the work of the Cistercians. The Second Crusade also marked the large-scale debut of St. Bernard's corporate warriors, who forever changed the spirit and nature of Christendom's military adventure in the Holy Land.


As the new standard bearer for corporate Catholicism, the Cistercian order aimed for renewed purity. The Cistercians disdained the Cluniacs' precious bed-covers, rich feasts, and vast property holdings. Attempting to restore the balance of St. Benedict's original scheme, they discarded Cluny's heavy liturgical burden and returned to manual labor in the wilderness. Like Cluny before, however, they enjoyed a reputation for peculiar piety. According to one legend, a visitor to heaven was surprised at first to find no Cistercians there until he discovered that they were hiding under Mary's robe.


Although they shared intimate relations with the papacy (the Cistercians were the first monks to be bound by a vow of direct obedience to the pope), the Cistercian order was structured much differently than Cluny. Its Carta Caritatis, or Charter of Charity, explicitly rejected the auto-imperialism of Cluny, while continuing to support the larger imperial aspirations of the papacy. Cistercians abbeys were bound by a federal framework, the most distinctive feature of which was the general chapter, the first “annual meeting” in modern corporate annals.


The Charter of Charity, which was largely the work of an Englishman, St. Stephen Harding, also decreed a policy of economic purity for the order. The Cistercians were to receive no seigniorial revenues or proprietary churches, nor were they to accept serfs or slaves as gifts or endowments. These early self-denying ordinances were quickly cast off, however, as they had been by the Cluniacs and the original Benedictines before them. If anything, the Cistercians rose from obscure poverty faster than any other order to become practitioners of large-scale commercial wool production.


What set the Cistercians apart was the scale of their enterprise and the cleverness with which they practiced it. The monks of Meaux, for instance, grazed 11,000 sheep on the marshes of the Humber, while the monks of Zwetl kept 2,000 sheep in single pasture. To counter the diseases that accompany flocks of this size, the white monks pioneered veterinary medicine, developing salves from mercury and alum to treat skin diseases, and slowing the spread of deadly liver fluke parasite by keeping their flocks moving constantly.


The Cistercians were commercial innovators as well. While the Benedictines and Cluniacs had operated some large sheep runs before them, they preferred to sell their wool mixed. The Cistercians were the first to establish an elaborate grading system which enabled them to obtain top price for the exceptionally fine wools they produced in the wolds of Lincolnshire. They also pioneered the sale of wool futures as early as 1165 when the abbey of Louth Park sold its wool for six years ahead to Flemish merchant William Cade.


The Cistercians even attained the stature of sovereign power when Alphonso I of Portugal made his entire kingdom vassal to their abbot in 1143. By 1300, there were an estimated 693 Cistercian abbeys, to say nothing of the Templars and others under their influence. Referring to the Cistercian mother-house at Citeaux, Conrad of Eberbach wrote, “Like a great lake whose waters pour out through a thousand streams, gathering impetus from their rapids, the new monks went forth from Citeaux to people the West.”


Saladin first encountered this tide outside the walls of Damascus. When he was a boy of eleven, the armies of the Second Crusade laid siege to his native city. Saladin, whose given name was Yusef ibn Ayyub, saw fierce fighting, and perhaps even more importantly, the ultimate triumph of intrigue which made the name Damascus synonymous with bitter betrayal for Christians. Despite superior force, the leaders of the Second Crusade were undone by the complicity of the orientalized Franks.


The bishop of Acre was particularly scandalized by these descendants of the first Crusaders, who had adopted Arab practices, such as bathing more frequently than twice a year. “They were more used to baths than to battles and even [their] priests left the cloister to go to the public bath,” he complained. Many of the Crusaders who settled in the Middle East also developed a taste for spicy food, took harems, abandoned their heavy broadswords for the finer steel of Damascus, and wore Arabic chasubles over their armor.


The only elements in European society which seemed immune to the seductive influences of the Holy Land were the military orders like the Templars. Because of their superior discipline, they played an increasingly important role in the defense and rule of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They garrisoned major castles, fought beside royal and baronial forces, and decided policy. Eventually, the Templars' distinctive uniform, featuring a red cross on a white coat, became emblematic of the entire crusading adventure.


Nothing in Islam – not even the hashishin assassins – compared with this moneyed, rank-smelling militia. Mohammed had declared that there are no monks in Islam, and the Koran contains no mention of them. They were no less alien to the devout and urbane Saladin, whose assumed name meant “Honor of the Faith.” Despite his famous tolerance, Saladin clearly saw the Christian military corporations as a mortal threat.


While his soldiers were still celebrating their great victory at Hattin, Saladin offered a bounty of 50 dinars in gold for every corporate Crusader who was brought to him alive. His followers turned up about one hundred Knights Templars, wearing the red cross on a white coat, and another hundred Knights Hospitallers, who wore a white cross on a black coat. Among them was the Templars' grand master, fierce de Ridefort.


Standing before their Moslem conqueror, wounded but erect in their chain mail, these knights represented the malicious heart of the Crusades. For decades they had been killing members of the Moslem faith not as armed adversaries, but because they were sworn to exterminate the infidel. They believed they were ensuring a place for themselves in heaven by murdering Moslems, women and children included.


Now they got what they gave. After slaying Reginald of Chatillon with one stroke of his scimitar, Saladin had the Templars and Hospitallers bound in a row. Then, before the sultan and the surviving Crusaders, they were savagely executed. Emirs and atabegs repeatedly plunged their curved swords into the writhing knights. Like their victims, the executioners believed they were guaranteeing themselves entry into heaven by killing infidels.


Saladin's victory at Hattin and his capture of Jerusalem a few weeks later seemed to give the Islamic East every advantage over the Christian West: superior military force, superior culture, superior technology, superior commercial location. With Saladin's jihad, the Arab world even briefly attained unity.


One of the few areas where Europeans led their adversaries was in the creation of self-perpetuating corporate entities. This seemed like a small thing at the time, but it turned out to be more important than all the rest for Islam was ultimately beset by a swarm of European corporate antagonists, both religious and secular.


These corporations broke Moslem sea power at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and relegated it to the backwaters of history for the next half millennia – until the Moslem world learned to employ corporations – and the technological innovations created by the Western corporate world – to its own ends.


But first it was Christian Europe’s turn to learn from the more culturally advanced Moslem world."

http://www.astonisher.com/archives/corporation/corporation_ch7.html

[iyah360]

from:
http://www.thornr.demon.co.uk/kchrist/overview.html
Portugal and the Military Orders

In the time of the Crusades, two large international military orders were formed to protect Christian interests in the Holy Land - the Templars and the Hospitallers. At the same time, in the Iberian peninsula, military orders were founded to combat the saracen incursions which had begun in the eighth century. About the Templars  
The Templars were founded around 1118, and soon formed commanderies around Europe to support their efforts in the Holy Land. By 1190 they had a castle at Tomar in Portugal. They became a very powerful military, financial and political force over the next two hundred years. Their downfall began in 1307, when Philip of France ordered the arrest of all Templars in France.  

The Foundation of the Order of Christ
King Dinis didn't believe the accusations made against the Templars, and when the Pope dissolved the Templars, he decided to form a new order, to which the Templar holdings would be given. The Order of Christ was founded in 1319. It is unclear whether many Templars continued in the new order. Some writers seem to think that the Templars just continued under a new name, whereas others think that the Order of Christ was a new formation.  

The First 100 Years  
The Headquarters of the order was eventually established at Tomar, which had been the Templar centre since the twelfth century. The Convento de Cristo at Tomar was extended throughout the Order's flowering in the age of discovery. It still exists, and is well worth a visit.

Henry the Navigator and the Seagoing Order
Prince Henry the Navigator was born in 1394, the third son of King João of Portugal.

At the age of nineteen, Henry and his brothers convinced King João to launch a Crusade against Ceuta, a Muslim stronghold on the African side across from Gibraltar. Henry's avowed aim was to extend the Holy Faith of Jesus Christ and bring it to all souls who wish to find salvation. This aim throws some light on his vocation for crusade and exploration.

Soon after the success of the expedition against Ceuta, Henry was appointed Governor of the Order of Christ, beginning an association whereby the Order became involved in Henry's voyages of discovery around the coast of Africa.

The Atlantic islands - the Azores and Madeiras had probably been discovered earlier, but Henry colonised them. His main aim was however to explore, and specifically to go south beyond Cape Bojador, just south of the Canaries, whose reefs and difficult currents had presented a psychological stopping point for previous expeditions. For generations, Spanish sea-lore had asserted that the coast of Africa was unnavigable past this point, and it took Henry 15 expeditions between 1424 and 1434 before one passed beyond the Cape. The exploration continued, and in 1441, an expedition brought back 200 slaves, the first tangible commercial success of the exploration. This changed public opinion of the expeditions, which up to that time had been seen as a waste of money.

The trade continued to prosper, and African goods filled Lisbon's markets and swelled the coffers of the Order of Christ. Trading posts were established, defended by the brethren, while the Templar's red cross continued to sail south. In 1460, the year of Henry's death, King Afonso V granted the Knights of Christ a 5% levy on all merchandise from the new African lands.
 

Discovery After Henry
After a brief hiatus at Henry's death, the discoveries continued. In 1469, King Afonso V granted a five-year monopoly in the West Guinea trade to a wealthy citizen of Lisbon, and then passed this on to his son João, who became King João II.

João continued the explorations, which culminated in Bartolomeu Dias's expedition to the Cape of Africa in 1488. Columbus was present when Dias returned to Lisbon, trying to persuade King João to fund his expedition to the West. Columbus had lived in Portugal from 1476 to 1484, making various sea voyages. Columbus's wife was the daughter of one of Henry's favourite Captains and the first governor of Porto Santo. Columbus spent some time living in Porto Santo, and examining his father-in-law's papers and charts. There are also suggestions that his father-in-law was connected with the Order of Christ. In the end King João was unwilling to support Columbus, and so Columbus went to Spain instead.

In Portugal the discoveries continued. King Manuel, João's successor, sent Vasco da Gama (a member of the Order of Christ) to sail around the Cape of Africa to India. He set sail in 1497 and reached Calicut. By 1509, Portugal had established a Viceroy in India.


The Order after Henry
The power and riches of the Order seem to have peaked in the reign of King Manuel, in the early 1500's. By the end of his reign the order possessed 454 commanderies, in Portugal, Africa and the Indies. Manuel also made extensive additions to the Order's headquarters in Tomar.

However, the religious vocation of the Order was faltering - in 1496 the brethren were dispensed from celibacy, and in 1505 from poverty. One source claims that in 1522 the Order was divided into two branches - one religious under the Pope, and one civil, under the king, as they remain today, although the evidence for this is disputed.

In 1530 there was an extreme attempt to reform the order. Fra Antonio of Lisbon attempted to reimpose the original rule, but this failed, and only a few knights remained under this new discipline.

In 1789 the Portuguese Order lost its religious character, being secularised by Queen Mary. The Papal Order became the Supreme Order of Christ, the highest of the five Pontifical Orders now in existence. Membership is reserved for Christian heads of state.

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Prince Henry the Navigator and the Institute at Sagres

Portugal is a country that has no coast along the Mediterranean Sea so the country's advances in worldwide exploration centuries ago comes at no surprise. However, it was the passion and goals of one man who truly moved Portuguese exploration forward.
Prince Henry was born in 1394 as the third son of King John I (King Joao I) of Portugal. At the age of 21, in 1415, Prince Henry commanded a military force that captured the Muslim outpost of Ceuta, located on the south side of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Three years later, Prince Henry founded his Institute at Sagres on the southwestern-most point of Portugal, Cape Saint Vincent - a place ancient geographers referred to as the western edge of the earth. The institute, best described as a fifteenth century research and development facility, included libraries, an astronomical observatory, ship-building facilities, a chapel, and housing for staff.

The institute was designed to teach navigational techniques to Portuguese sailors, to collect and disseminate geographical information about the world, to invent and improve navigational and seafaring equipment, to sponsor expeditions, and to spread Christianity around the world - and perhaps even to find Prester John! Prince Henry brought together some of the leading geographers, cartographers, astronomers, and mathematicians from throughout Europe to work at the institute.

Although Prince Henry never sailed on any of his expeditions and rarely left Portugal, he became known as Prince Henry the Navigator.

The institute's primary exploration goal was to explore the western coast of Africa to locate a route to Asia. A new type of ship, called a caravel was developed at Sagres. It was fast and was much more maneuverable than prior types of boats and though they were small, they were quite functional. Christopher Columbus' ships, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria were all caravels.

Caravels were dispatched south along the western coast of Africa. Unfortunately, a major obstacle along the African route was Cape Bojador, southeast of the Canary Islands (located in Western Sahara). European sailors were afraid of the cape, for supposedly to its south lay monsters and insurmountable evils.

Prince Henry sent fifteen expeditions to navigate south of the cape from 1424 to 1434 but each returned with it's captain giving excuses and apologies for not having passed the dreaded Cape Bojador. Finally, in 1434 Prince Henry sent Captain Gil Eannes (who had previously attempted the Cape Bojador voyage) south; this time, Captain Eannes sailed to the west prior to reaching the cape and then headed eastward once passing the cape. Thus, none of his crew saw the dreadful cape and it had been successfully passed, without catastrophe befalling the ship.

Following the successful navigation south of Cape Bojador, exploration of the African coast continued.

In 1441, Prince Henry's caravels reached Cape Blanc (the cape where Mauritania and Western Sahara meet). In 1444 a dark period of history began when Captain Eannes brought the first boatload of 200 slaves to Portugal. In 1446, Portuguese ships reached the mouth of the Gambia River.

In 1460 Prince Henry the Navigator died but work continued at Sagres under the direction of Henry's nephew, King John II of Portugal. The institute's expeditions continued to venture south and then rounded the Cape of Good Hope and sailed to the east and throughout Asia over the next few decades.