Breaks and Continuities: The Absence of the Monumental

We learn from Luís de Moura Sobral that in order to legitimize his rule, John IV initiated “an immense propaganda campaign using all available means and media”—an assessment that arguably is somewhat exaggerated. The principle media used were printed texts and images. Much of this material was printed in Paris, or else in London, as was the Lusitania Liberata of 1645, whose engravings rendered it the most ambitious work promulgating the Restoration in iconographical terms. About how the new power structures were visualized in Lisbon, we know relatively little. Has much been lost during the 1755 earthquake and fire of the city? Or can we assume that this branch of the “propaganda campaign” received relatively little attention by the king and his advisors? This is hinted at in a treatise of 1652 entitled Arte de furtar (Art of stealing). In an entirely nonironic way, the text with this great title is dedicated to King John IV and is committed to furthering his memory. The author, presumably the Jesuit Manuel da Costa, recommends that the king, among other things, place statues on Lisbon's rossios and squares. This had, then, apparently not been done twelve years after the revolt. In the years after 1640 hardly any use was in fact made of Lisbon's space to visualize the Restoration. The monument we see today on the Praça dos Restauradores, consisting of an obelisk flanked by the personifications of Independence and Victory, was dedicated in 1886.

Portugal 1640: National Identity, Providentialism

We will dive into the image worlds of the Portuguese Restoration by examining images that had a role in the run-up to the revolt. These were certain images woven into stories of miracles and others which we can assume were used for clandestine purposes by the coup's conspirators. A miracle-centered discourse formed the decisive ideological framework for images of the Restoration. This was true for autonomist texts appearing before 1640 and for legitimist texts that were published after the revolt. In both, Portugal was represented as an instrument of divine providence and the Portuguese as God's second chosen people. In its unwavering attempt to discern divine working in the temporal realm, Portugal was similar to other Early Modern empires. Strikingly, we also find comparable discourses in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires. Nevertheless, in seventeenth-century Portugal, political providentialism interacted in a special way with the emergence of a national Portuguese identity. As we will see, the decisive aspect of this providentialism was its spread over a number of continents. It was present in both Portugal and the colonial territories, above all in Brazil and the Estado da Índia.

Why do human beings produce images? And what do these images actually accomplish? Now as before, art historians and a range of theorists work under the weight of these basic questions. In this book, I hope to illuminate the complex, dynamic processes that were foundational for the global movement of images at a specific time. My historical focus will be on the 1640 Lisbon coup d’état and its visualization in Portugal and its overseas colonial territories. What image worlds emerged in connection with this political caesura? How were these worlds intertwined? What agency could they develop?

On 1 December 1640, a group of Portuguese higher nobility (fidalgos, the “sons of someone,” fils d’algo) put an end to Spain's rule of Portugal, which had begun in 1580. In the early morning hours, we read, a group of allegedly exactly forty conspirators gathered to execute the long-planned coup. They killed and then defenestrated the hated state secretary, Miguel de Vasconcelos, imprisoned the Spanish vicereine of Portugal, Margaret of Savoy, and declared the powerful Duke John II of Braganza (1604–1656) as the new king. He entered Lisbon on 6 December, and on 15 December he was sworn in as King John IV of Portugal.

The Ivory Figures of the Good Shepherd

Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries in Goa and presumably other places in the Portuguese Estado da Índia there was a group of objects aside from Madonnas and crucifixes manufactured in especially high numbers and probably in series. These were ivory sculptures of a shepherd boy sitting on a steep, nearly tower-like mountainous formation—an image now designated as the Good Shepherd (figs. 173–177). These figures have a very specific yet not easily decipherable iconography. As a rule, the boy is clothed in a wool cloak and more often than not sits on a heart that grows out of a stone or mountain; he holds a lamb on his lap or shoulder, and sometimes a shepherd's crook in his hand. Often, one of his arms rests on a gourd. Usually, the boy's legs are crossed and his head leans a bit to the side against his open right hand. The mountain on which he poses is full of sheep and other, wild, animals that comingle peacefully. Often we see Saint Mary Magdalene lying and reading in a cave at the sculpture's bottom. Water also generally pours out from a spring and flows from the top of the rocky outcropping onto the work's lower levels

Today, in Lisbon's Madre de Deus church, visitors find a painting by Bento Coelho da Silveira, created in 1650. It is part of a cycle of images devoted to the lives of Saints Francis and Clara (fig. 184). The work depicts the dream of St. Francis, but not as presented in the saint's hagiography. In the vita accounts, the young Francis is still engaged in worldly things and dreams of a palace full of weapons and armor. In the midst of the vision, he hears a voice instructing him to abandon his military aspirations. In another episode in the saint's life, a crucifix summons Francis to renovate the dilapidated church.

In Coelho's painting, the dream vision of an armament-filled palace is combined with the Miracle of the Crucifix. As we have seen, this combination was widely promulgated in mid-seventeenth-century Portugal in another context: that of the Vision of Ourique, part and parcel of Portugal's founding mythology (figs. 77, 127–30). We find the discarded weapons in the left foreground, and there as well is a crucifix looking down upon the narrative's protagonist. The representation of St. Francis is thus linked interpictorially with the iconography of Portuguese political providentialism; or, in other words, the Portuguese Restoration's image worlds encroach on other pictorial themes.

Following the coup d’état of 1 December 1640, Lisbon's residents expressed their great joy at the proclamation of the new king with bonfires, parades, and, as the Restauraçao de Portugal prodigiosa tells us, “other festive inventions.” The king entered the city triumphantly on 6 December. Some say heavy rain did not prevent masses of people from streaming into the streets, while another account informs us that, on the contrary, rather few people even noticed the Count of Braganza's arrival in the city. Be that as it may, the new king entered the palace and showed himself at the same window where, five days before, independence from Spain had been proclaimed. Salutes were fired from the Castelo Sao Jorge, and in the evening the city flowed in the light of festive bonfires. The “largest festival ever seen” was celebrated over three days, and Saturday 15 December was chosen as the day for the king's official swearing-in ceremony. Although most of the scholarly literature refers to this event as the coronation, John IV was not crowned, but simply elevated to king and sworn in legally—levantamento and juramento are the terms used in the reports. This fact is remarkable, since it involves a conscious decision by the Portuguese not to distance themselves in this respect from Spain: since 1370, Spanish kings were only crowned in exceptional circumstances, a formal oath before the assembly of the estates, the Cortes, replacing this act. In Portugal, however, until 1580, kings had been both crowned and anointed. This changed with the Restoration. John IV's assumption of power was thus marked by the ritual of oath-taking.

A manuscript extant in two versions recounts the history of Portugal from the Vision of Ourique to the Restoration and onward to the ascension to the throne of Afonso VI in 1657. It stems from the hand of a Franciscan living in Goa named António de Sao Thiago. The ink drawings in these manuscripts, presumably made by an Indian artist, are an integral part of their argumentation. One version of the manuscript is located in Harvard, the other version in Lisbon. They clearly derive from the same pairing of author and draughtsman, but they are not identical. There are passages in the Harvard manuscript that are missing in the Lisbon version, which also has fewer images. The treatise focuses on the translatio of the salvific mission from the ancient Israelites to the Portuguese, beginning with Afonso Henriques. Prophecies from the Old Testament are here cited to demonstrate that the Portuguese are the new apostles and missionaries, who are in the process of implementing a divinely ordained universal conversion. Above all, for António de São Thiago, the Portuguese have been chosen to missionize and convert the East, from where Christ's return was expected. This providential destiny would be fulfilled by the Braganza dynasty, a fact pointed to by the Portuguese monarchy's reconquest of many overseas territories that had been considered lost.

IN THE MIDDLE East, the late medieval period was characterized by an increasing number of richly documented revolts: Bedouin riots, slave revolts, popular revolts of an economic nature led by commoners, military revolts led by generals and local governors (amīrs), rebellions of a religious or sectarian nature, among others. Whether in late Abbasid Baghdad, or in the large Mamluk cities of Cairo and Damascus, these revolts and the ways in which they are reported in the historical chronicles demonstrate critical trends and patterns, making their examination in a comparative perspective all the more compelling. How were these revolts dealt with by the political and legal authorities of the time? Were rebels always condemned and criminalized, or were they considered deviant based on specific criteria? Did popular riots have the power to influence political decisions, and was violence their only means?

In order to answer these questions, this chapter focuses on two sets of revolts identified in the sources: on the one hand, revolts that directly challenged the authority of the ruler; on the other hand, revolts that called to redress a perceived wrong without challenging the ruler's legitimacy. This difference, it is argued, is key in order to understand the ways in which revolts were framed politically and legally. These revolts are examined in a dynamic perspective by focusing on the interactions between three social groups or actors: the rebels (be they civilians or military figures), the Sultan (ruler), and the religious scholars/ jurists/ judges (‘ulamā’) who often acted as negotiators between rebels and political authorities. The chapter sheds light on the legal and political processes through which rebels were either demonized or absolved of any wrongdoing, often through the use or manipulation of legal concepts. The chapter focuses on the cities of Cairo and Damascus during the Mamluk Sultanate (648– 923/ 1250– 1517), with a few examples included from Abbasid Baghdad and Mongol Persia.

“To examine a crime is in effect to examine the way in which certain acts were perceived and labelled by those who sought to control and curtail them.” This includes not only the legal and political authorities of the time described in the sources, but also the authors who often coloured their accounts with their own ideological and theological perspectives. This is directly related to the nature of our source material.

The Franks’ conquest of a significant area of the eastern Mediterranean around the year 1100 brought, for almost the first time, large numbers of Muslims under Latin Christian control. In the immediate aftermath of these conquests by the First Crusade, Muslims living in the captured territory were subject to different treatment, which was usually dependent on how the area had been taken. In general, those towns captured by being stormed following a siege would be sacked and much of the population killed or enslaved. This happened at Antioch in 1098 and Jerusalem in 1099, for example. The alternative, and which seems to have occurred more or less equally frequently, was that places were captured after the population surrendered. In those circumstances, the people were usually given the option of moving away to Muslim territory or of continuing to live there under Frankish rule. This comparatively tolerant way of treating the populations of those cities captured by surrender contrasts with popular ideas about crusading, even though this was fairly standard practice in medieval warfare, in both the Middle East and Europe. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about this way of treating the inhabitants of the conquered regions.

It is impossible to make precise comments about the numbers of people who chose to leave their homes and move as refugees to lands still under Muslim control because evidence for this is almost wholly lacking. However, it is possible to trace some general patterns. From the chronicle evidence, it seems that, initially, a majority of Muslims chose to leave. Small numbers even travelled as far as Baghdad, where they publicly lamented the Frankish conquests and lambasted the Muslim rulers there for their failure to respond in any meaningful way. Most, however, merely moved to the nearest convenient Muslim settlement. For example, those who escaped from around Antioch moved a few dozen miles east to Aleppo, while those from near Jerusalem moved a similar distance to the area around Damascus, or to Egypt. However, many of those who did so were evidently disappointed with their lot, as help from their co-religionists was much less forthcoming than they may have been expecting. This was in sharp contrast to the Franks, who started offering generous tax conditions to those Muslims who would live and work in their newly conquered lands.

IN 1206 CHINGGIS Qan unified the previously warring people of eastern Inner Asia to create the “Great Mongol State” (Yeke Mongγol Ulus). By conquering or subduing his rivals, he removed competing sources of loyalty and concentrated political power in his own hands. This centralization of power was praised by observers, both Mongol and foreign alike, who juxtaposed the Chinggisid state, characterized by a stable government and a well-defined military hierarchy, with the supposedly more volatile and centrifugal tendencies of the earlier aristocratic households (ayimaqs), often referred to as “tribes.” The Persian historian and bureaucrat, Juvaynī, noted that the Mongols of old had been so poor that they viewed metal stirrups as a sign of wealth and nobility, whilst the Secret History of the Mongols—an anonymous biography of Chinggis Qan, most likely compiled during the reign of his successor Ögödei before undergoing later revision—devoted many lines to the lack of leadership on the Inner Asian steppe prior to 1206. The anonymous Chinese history of Chinggis Qan's early campaigns, Shengwu qingsheng lu (聖武親征錄), which was completed during the reign of Qubilai Qa’an (r. 1260– 1294), characterized those who submitted to Chinggis Qan as “women who have no husbands; as horses who have no pastures.” In short, they lived in a state of disorder and poverty, which was only rectified by the creation of a strong government under Chinggis Qan's leadership.

These undoubtedly exaggerated accounts of turmoil amongst the Inner Asian nomads, written well after Chinggis Qan's rise to power, were surely intended to discourage disloyalty to the new regime. They obliged readers to consider the great power the Mongols enjoyed under Chinggisid rule and to think of any attack against their leadership and laws as a return to the chaos of the past. Indeed, to turn away from the precepts and edicts of Chinggis Qan was considered an attack on the political and social order of the Mongol Empire itself. Those guilty of such crimes were often described as being in a state of bulqa, a term that was initially employed to refer to “rebellious people” (bulqa irgen), but was later glossed in the Persian histories with the Arabic fitna (chaos, disorder).

IN CANTO 15 of Dante's inferno, Dante in his imagined poetic incarnation meets his old friend and mentor Brunetto Latini. Latini is condemned to walk on burning sands for eternity, the punishment for being a sodomite.

Latini's punishment is emblematic of the wider project of Dante's early fourteenthcentury Commedia—to categorize behaviours and beliefs and to map out their degree of deviance or virtue and their consequences in the afterlife. Punishments are made to fit the crime with a logic known as contrapasso. So Latini must forever walk on burning sands, as apparently befits the sterility and wastefulness of the act of sodomy.

This volume is about the concept of deviance. It is about the categories and judgements which societies construct and enact to distinguish between good and bad; to make sense of the world; to demonize and to persecute. Only rarely do these operate univocally: they tend to be made up of intertwined legal, economic, moral, religious forces and logics. The book will examine the “how” and the “what” of such processes across cultures, whilst hoping that this allows us to gesture towards the “why.” This introduction offers some initial thoughts about the construction of categories of deviance, it sets out the conception of the volume as a whole, and it suggests ways to approach the essays published here. The chapters discuss a wide range of societies, from China to France, North Africa to the Mongol empire. They cover many different kinds of deviance: from theft and violence, to far more disturbing medieval judgements relating to sexuality, religious belief, and identity.

The general introduction is followed by a series of three more detailed sectional introductions, which focus on the individual essays, attempt to offer some comparative thoughts (partly as a response to the patchy geographical coverage here—unfortunately covid-related challenges have meant that not all original contributors were able to take part), and suggest some further reading.

The view expressed in Stephen Runciman's above quotation—that crusading can be interpreted as a simple exercise of religious intolerance—has been significantly nuanced over the last half century. The complex religious motivations and character of the set of actions we collectively define as “crusading” has been more sensitively and carefully delineated (as Jonathan Riley-Smith's comment above indicates). Historians no longer view crusading as the undifferentiated actions of a monolithic and persecuting society. The many contexts and meanings of crusading have sparked dozens of studies on motivations for crusading, the nature and reach of crusade preaching, the environmental, cultural, liturgical, monastic, gendered, memorial, and material aspects of the crusades and the worlds that produced and responded to them. The “cultural turn,” then, is a prominent feature of crusade scholarship over the last twenty years or so.

In this book, I intend to concentrate on medieval ideas about space, the body, emotion, and memory as ways of analyzing and understanding crusade violence. This approach will, I hope, shed new light on what is an issue of both medieval and modern concern. Violence itself was part and parcel of crusading as a military activity. But in recent times, crusade violence has also become a worryingly important element in modern medievalisms which construct the Middle Ages as a historical model for dealing with perceived present problems. The upsurge in white supremacy, racisms, and other forms of dangerous intolerance across the globe in the last decades is all too frequently accompanied by images and assumptions about the violence of crusading as something to be honoured and replicated. It is my hope that by parsing more carefully how cultures construct and remember violence will help us to understand better how and why this has occurred.

How, then, should we now understand the innate violence of crusading?