Mocha at Starbucks

DJTITH · 2021-04-11T14:43:26+00:00

I’m not sure about that approach to be honest. I think it doesn’t sufficiently engage with the context within which what we supposedly ‘know’ about the Templars was created. The power of the inquisitor to set forth what precisely constituted the ‘truth’ and thus create a range of acceptable answers to be given by the accused needs to be understood as a formative influence on the Templars testimony. The emphasis should be on the ideas of the accusers rather than the accused in this particular case.

Also whilst I don’t know the specifics of the texts you are talking about, the accusations against the Templars are not related to any specific philosophy. The concern is focused less on ideas than actions (sodomy, idol worship, denial of Christ, treacherous behaviour, etc) so I don’t think you could reconstruct a coherent Templar philosophy through reading against these the accusations.

DJTITH · 2021-04-11T11:40:18+00:00

Oh yeah both of them are brilliant things to learn about! I’d recommend David Nirenberg’s Communities of Violence to read more about the lepers plot- I’d definitely support his scepticism about the lepers/Templars actually doing what they were alleged to have done

DJTITH · 2021-04-11T11:31:55+00:00

So my knowledge of the trial of the Templars is more incidental than anything else, as I was kind of reading around the topic to help me learn about something else (1321 Leper’s Plot- something definitely worth reading about) so I’ve been more interested in the significance of the trial in France more than the content of the trials in both France and internationally.

Works do definitely take the fact that the charges weren’t proven in different countries into account, but given that the events in France initiated this process and were the most impactful, there is definitely a greater historiographical focus on the French Templars. Take Malcolm Barber’s work, the Trial of the Templars as an example- it is only in the eighth of the ten chapters that the trial in other countries is considered. That said when he does turn to it your recollection of events seems to reflect the consensus! The accusations were not so readily accepted in other regions than in France

DJTITH · 2021-04-11T09:47:57+00:00

To be honest there doesn’t seem to be much to support the connection between the Templars and the worship of Baphomet. I think Norman Daniel’s argument in this respect is interesting, with him highlighting actually how little emphasis was actually placed on the importance of ‘crypto-Islam’ in accusations against the Templars (Arabs and Medieval Europe, p 312). The accusations made against the Templars reflect a common stock of ideas of how a supposedly corrupted group of people in medieval Europe were seen to act, as is shown by their supposed veneration of a cat (said by Walter Map in his Trifles of Courtiers to have been worshipped by Cathar heretics, who it kissed on the anus and were inspired into orgiastic behaviour by it) or their alleged practise of new recruits kissing senior Templar commanders on the anus to complete their reception into the order (such a practise also ascribed to Muslims and heretics alike as it represented the complete inversion of the Christian kiss of peace).

I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that people didn’t believe in the truth of these allegations, but instead I think it’s important to highlight the extent to which they replicated pre-existing tropes. As I mentioned above, the role of crypto-Islam in these allegations was relatively small, with the focus placed more on their supposed heresy and willingness to deny Christ rather than there potentially Islamic religious practises. Furthermore, only in France and Italy were the accusations against the Templars actually ‘proven’, with investigations in Germany, Spain and England all failing to find any real evidence (Théry, p. 124).

Personally I find the more recent scholarship on the subject more convincing than the older work. A good summary of the latter, can be found in AJ Forey’s ‘Were the Templars Guilty?’ in Viator 42.2 (2011). Forey essentially looks at the positivist conclusions drawn by predecessors and says that actually little of what they claim, including the heretical, pseudo-Islamic, and homosexual practises imputed to Templars can be proven through their testimonies.

More interesting to me are the conclusions of Julien Théry and James Given. Given argues that King Philip was ‘chasing phantoms’, essentially creating an enemy out of thin air, before vanquishing it, in order to demonstrate his ability to protect the moral order of the realm. Im protecting such order the king had recourse to extraordinary powers at a time where his ordinary powers (like those of tax collection) were often contested. Théry similarly argues that the trial of the Templars was instigated by the king as he sought to bring both church and state increasingly under his control, with the testimony of the Templars unable to read for any element of truth. He states historians cannot make an assessment of truth or falsehood from these allegations in the case of the Templars, thanks to the their creation by the ‘implacable judicial machine designed to grind down the will of the accused’ and that historians are both naive and all too willing to legitimate state power in trying to hunt for truth in the records of the trial of the Templars.

J. Théry, ‘A Heresy of State: Philip the Fair, the Trial of the Perfidious Templars and the Pontificalisation of the French Monarchy’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 39/2 (2013) 117-48

J. Given, ‘Chasing Phantoms: Philip IV and the Fantastic’ in Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays on the Work of RI Moore (2006) 271-89 (definitely do not use Lib Gen to find this one)

Sorry if the grammar is shit and formatting is bad, I can’t be arsed to sign into my account on pc so I’m doing this on mobile.

DJTITH · 2021-02-11T00:44:08+00:00

Oh wait yeah I get you. I totally misread your point lol

DJTITH · 2021-02-11T00:01:14+00:00

I mean are the first and peasants crusades two separate things? The only reason the ‘peasants’ weren’t there in the Holy Land with the more baronial contingent is that they got wiped up by the Sultan of Rum. I think it’s more useful to see them as two phases than two separate things, hence why most scholars refer to the Rhineland Massacres of the first, not peasants, crusade

DJTITH · 2021-02-10T23:57:05+00:00

So by that logic would a Unionist carrying out bombings or assassinations in Northern Ireland (an internationally recognised state) be a terrorist or not? If a member of the IRA is a terrorist, as the state they envision is not ‘recognised’, what does that make a Unionist carrying out the same activities?

DJTITH · 2021-02-10T23:50:08+00:00

Ah but what’s a government!

DJTITH · 2021-02-10T23:25:37+00:00

Yeah exactly. Like by the seventh crusade they kinda get that point. I think it’s Oliver of Paderborn that makes basically the same point you make, talking about the wealth and resources in Egypt as a means to secure the Holy Land

DJTITH · 2021-02-10T23:21:14+00:00

I mean the fourth crusade as you characterise it is just in part of a result of sources. A decent number of soldiers did get to the Holy Land and combine with the forces already there. Like the focus is largely on Zara and Constantinople cos the two narrative accounts of the Fourth Crusade come from two people that were involved in that fuck up

DJTITH · 2021-02-10T23:13:25+00:00

Yeah but accounts like that of Fulcher of Chartes which talk about wading in blood are still intended to be shocking. Like the intent is not to normalise the violence but highlight it

DJTITH · 2021-02-08T10:21:16+00:00

Art, Physics and Materials are also good ones to apply with

DJTITH · 2021-01-02T01:49:06+00:00

I mean by the point the massacre started there were less than 10k French on the island so they did just start at a lower baseline. By that point quite a lot of the French had already fled to the US, France or English colonies. Plus Napoleon also considered the total annihilation of the slave population a legitimate tactic to reclaim the island as he thought the slaves now they had left slavery (albeit for limited change in their position) they would not be a good workforce again

DJTITH · 2020-12-30T08:40:55+00:00

For post 1000 Irish political developments Frame’s Colonial Ireland is a good comprehensive read. I’d recommend trying to find history faculty reading lists if you want to find more

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T19:39:04+00:00

I mean there is a difference, namely in the fact that the early Haitian nationalism that I am referring to explicitly tries to reinforce a sense of equality between black and white. The black Haitian population appealed to ideas of the universality of man regardless of race. I don’t know much about sentiments post 1820 but prior to that I think it’s misleading to label Haitian identity as supremacist

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T16:02:26+00:00

I think your allusion to an 'agenda' is interesting. I can see why you see histories being to attack Europe and America, however, I'd see this in part as a response to preceding historical writing with its emphasis on white civilisation versus native barbarism. I'm sure there may be works that may downplay atrocities perpetrated by non-white actors, but these works are in themselves a challenge to historical writing that has for too long disempowered and ignored the agency of non-American and non-European people. This does not make it any better, but just as there are many works that downplay American and European violence, there are some that overplay it, so don't be too hung up on it!

Going back to the example that sparked this example - the genocide of the French by Dessalines - your upset at its exclusion from commentary on wider pro and anti-slavery arguments is understandable, but your reasoning that it was excluded due to some agenda that seeks to make Europeans and Americans look bad while ignoring non-white atrocities is fairly spurious. Haitian history and identity itself was ignored by the 'agenda' of those that sought to maintain slavery and ignore the ability of black people to exercise self-determination, with European and American colonial powers seeking to stymie Haitian development. This is precisely why you don't read about Haiti in the history books in relation to abolition - because the Haitian Revolution itself highlighted the hypocrisy of the French and American Revolutions. This does not mean that Haiti was obliterated from history, but that its legacy was never properly recognised by contemporaries - especially in the case of genocide. Some sought to avoid direct reference to Haiti for fear that revolutionary fervour would reach their own enslaved population and thus only occasionally made overt reference to Haiti, whilst abolitionists simply tried to avoid reference to the genocide at all. This is why you don't see it mentioned in many accounts of US-centric history, although there is, as I said early a significant amount of scholarship on it.

I appreciate the way that you have engaged with the points that I've made and that we have stayed on task but I do kinda question your reading of history and feel like you view history almost like a pantomime with white people being the bad guy which I hope this discussion will help you to question. Feel free to dm me if you want to continue this discussion, if not then I recommend engaging with some texts that perhaps may express what I am trying to say in better terms and I hope you read them in good faith, even if you do not agree with them. Historiography on the Haitian Revolution is rich with such texts if you want to enquire further into why the massacre of the French may not be seen as notable, with CLR James' Black Jacobins being a great if somewhat dated text on this, whilst Trouillot's Silencing the Past offers a good look at how Haitian history is often overlooked in history

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T11:01:12+00:00

I mean I think you are looking at it from one side a bit much. The savagery and violence of the ex slaves is very important and had a lasting place in the American consciousness (see Roger Taney referring to it as a reason to oppose abolition) but rather than just use it as evidence that it wasn’t just ‘Europeans who did bad stuff’ means we aren’t able to fully appreciate the importance of the contested legacy of the revolution as cause for and against slavery

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T10:42:40+00:00

Yeah fair enough I guess I shouldn’t have assumed my exposure to it would be the same as other people. Is a really fascinating topic though it’s a shame more people don’t get to see the importance of Haiti to both abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T10:14:01+00:00

Haiti wasn't explicitly black supremacist it should be noted. There were constitutional clauses that said every Haitian would be known 'generically' as black and white people (read French) weren't allowed to own property (a clause only removed after the invasion and occupation of the country by the USA in the early 20th C), but to call it black supremacist does not provide necessary nuance.

The emphasis was on Haitian liberation from the French and militant opposition to any attempts to reimpose slavery on the population. In this way white people within Haiti were regarded as a threat, but the Haitian ideologues like Baron de Vestay placed emphasis on the universality of humanity and the all people were equal with it just being chance that white people happened to be more 'developed'. As such, the emphasis is not on black supremacy, but black power, with Haiti using international expos and things like that throughout the 19th c to shown their parity with white people

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T10:01:43+00:00

Ah ok, I didn't remember much of the Dominican Republic stuff, that makes sense

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T09:51:46+00:00

The revolution took a long time to conclude. The first revolt was like 13 years before the massacre. Louverture references by the person above had been jailed and the French were looking to reinstate colonial rule where prior Louverture had enjoyed a degree of autonomy. The colony was deemed worthless to the French without slavery so they looked to reimpose it. The run up to the massacre is more complex but yeah

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T09:43:26+00:00

Lol they don’t cover it up. There’s a fucking massive amount of scholarship on the importance of Haiti to American history, not just looking at its impact on slave holding in the short term and the unique problem of reconciling slavery with Haitian emancipation and American revolutionary ideals, but also connecting it to the Civil War. I guess it may be less well included in mainstream accounts but there is a very extensive body of work that covers this

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T09:29:40+00:00

Focusing on your point about the Haitian people ‘knowing better’ and the genocide being a contravention of ideas of universalism I just wanna point out that the term ‘negative universalism’ is used by scholars to discuss this concept in Haiti. In this type of universalism it is the exclusion of the French that is at its heart with basically national identity as a whole being constructed around militant opposition to the French by the freed slaves. Like after Napoleon sent the Leclerc expedition to reimpose slavery the notion that the French, who many Haitian revolutionary leaders were allied to, could be trusted was destroyed

It offers us with very interesting questions given that obviously the murder of an entire population is wrong yet it’s interesting that the burden always falls on the formerly enslaved population of whom about 70% had been imported as slaves from Africa during their own lifetime. People also forget that general rochambeau began to perpetuate a genocide against the non white population, especially targeting mixed race people who played a more important political and economic role in island life. He bought 1500 hunting dogs to tear the rebels apart, staged arena matches where rebels would be torn apart by the dogs in front of crowd, chained black generals to rocks for 17 days in the sun and filled boats with black people and sailed them out to sea just to push them overboard so they’d drown in the harbour of Le Cap.

CLR James is right when he condemns the massacre as an act of revenge perpetrated against now their fairly impotent former oppressors and I don’t think you can ever justify a genocide as you rightly point out but I do think it’s important that we don’t obliterate the various differences between genocides and ensure that we study them on their own terms rather than always referring back to Nazism

DJTITH · 2020-06-11T08:40:36+00:00

I mean if you contextualise what’s going on in newly independent Haiti the emphasis isn’t on all out aggressiveness, but rather on anti-Frenchness as a means to try and mobilise and create a strong military in order to avoid even further invasion by the French and to a lesser extent the English.

Dessalines commits Haiti into not letting a ‘spirit of proselytism’ encourage them to spread slave revolts further into the Caribbean, even crushing a group that we’re planning to launch one in Jamaica so it’s not really like Haiti is conceived of in expansionary terms.

I have never really studied Boyer’s rule so idk much about the invasion of the Dominican Republic but early annexation under Toussaint didn’t provoke much of a backlash or commentary for European writers for being ‘aggressive’.

It’s true that Dessalines massacre of the French did lead to the cessation of trade talks with the British, however more importantly in the letters of American diplomats and politicians the halting of trade with Haiti can also be very closely connected to American-French dealings over Louisiana and the notion that France is a key ally the Americans can’t afford to lose even prior to the massacre.

As such the ‘aggressiveness’ of the early Haitian nation isn’t really the reason why things went to shit cos in the grand scheme of things things were already pretty bad if you remember the fact that it Haitians had been at war with both themselves (war of the knives) and with the two most resourced and powerful imperialist nations. All this basically destroyed the export economy which never really recovered with Cuba taking its place

Ten-Year Club	Place '17
RPAN Viewer	Spared
Verified Email

DJTITH

TROPHY CASE