Age Of Crusades Research Articles

Schillers Geschichtsdenken: Die Unbegreiflichkeit der Weltgeschichte by Alexander Jakovljević

Reviewed by: Schillers Geschichtsdenken: Die Unbegreiflichkeit der Weltgeschichte by Alexander Jakovljević Asko Nivala Alexander Jakovljević. Schillers Geschichtsdenken: Die Unbegreiflichkeit der Weltgeschichte. Berlin: Ripperger & Kremers Verlag, 2015. 381 pp. Among the many contributions of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790) was to question the dogmatic belief in providence: Kant argued that the human mind represents both organic nature and human history as if (als ob) both were teleological, although we can never verify this claim. Despite the fact that Kant limited teleology to regulative use, Karl Löwith claimed in his influential study Meaning in History (1949) that the nineteenth-century philosophy of history is nothing but secularized eschatology. Although Löwith's argument is a simplification, his criticism of master narratives had enormous influence on the development of postmodernism. Since Hayden White's Metahistory (1973), historians have debated to what extent historical events themselves have order and to what extent it is only the historian's narration that gives them meaning. Alexander Jakovljević's Schillers Geschichtsdenken: Die Unbegreiflichkeit der Weltgeschichte (2015) shows how complex Friedrich Schiller's historical thought was, and provides some new insights into how he theorized the relationship between teleology and contingency in history. Schiller's place is very interesting among the post-Kantian philosophers, because he published his major works before the rise of German idealism: his position seems to be somewhere between Kant's regulative approach to teleology and Hegel's belief that the telos of history is the accumulation of freedom. Jakovljević convincingly shows that Schiller's position is based on the tension between two almost opposite views of history. In 1789, Schiller was appointed professor of history at the university of Jena on Goethe's recommendation. His famous inaugural lecture Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte? (1789) appears to be firmly anchored in the belief that human history is a teleological process. It was published one year before Kant's criticism of teleological judgments in the third critique. In contrast, Ueber das Erhabene (1801) provides a very different understanding of history. Schiller argued there that history is incomprehensible and seems to be ruled more by coincidence (Zufall) than teleology. The previous scholarship has often assumed that Schiller moved from earlier providentialism to a more pessimist understanding of history because of his disappointment with the horrors of the French Revolution. According to Jakovljević, Schiller's hovering between providentialism and coincidentalism should not be seen as a linear development from the former to the latter. Rather Jakovljević proposes that Schiller's position becomes more understandable in a context of genre-specific readings that take into account all three fields in which Schiller was active: philosophy of history, historiography, and historical drama. In addition to the introduction (Chapter 1) and conclusions (Chapter 5), the book is divided into three chapters that follow this classification. The introduction is carefully written, and defines the key concepts of the study, namely telos, contingency (Kontingenz), and coincidence (Zufall), and explains the theoretical framework provided by Reinhart Koselleck and Hayden White. Chapter 2 starts with Schiller's inaugural lecture, which again supported the idea that historical development is teleological. In a teleological framework every historical event must be necessary, but Schiller's own work as a historian was in tension with this theoretical assumption of universal history. This problem became evident for Schiller especially when he was working with medieval [End Page 324] sources and the age of Crusades: it was difficult to explain why the Middle Ages were necessary for the universal development of mankind. Highlighting Schiller's aesthetic approach to history, Jakovljević focuses on the metaphors Schiller used. For instance, describing medieval history as "unknown ocean" (ungewisses Meer) implies that historical events are coincidental. This difficulty was related to the premises of the Enlightenment, for the Middle Ages was still mostly seen as an era of religious fanaticism, political despotism, and a multitude of chaotic events resulting from them. In Chapter 3, the problem of coincidence is now transposed to the question of the historical agency of individuals facing the pressure of social organizations. The most important source in this chapter is Schiller's Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande von der Spanischen Regierung...

The Theology and Times of William of Tripoli, O.P.: A Different View of Islam

The 13th century, the age of universities and cathedrals, was a time when Europeans journeyed to unknown realms and encountered different religions. It was also the age of Crusades. William of Tripoli spent his life and ministry in the world around Acre in the Latin Kingdom, a crossroads for art, trade, and contacts between Christians and Muslims. His writings offer not only a positive presentation of Muslim life and faith but also traces of a Christian theology of that religion.

The impact of the Crusades on the Jewish-Christian debate

It is well known that Jewish life in western Europe declined greatly in the Middle Ages, as relative tolerance for Jews and Judaism deteriorated into persecution, massacres, forced conversions, and eventual expulsions. Historical events, of course, do not occur in a vacuum, and, therefore, attempts have been made to explain this change for the worse in the Jewish status in Europe. Some historians have looked for a watershed event in the relations between Jews and Christians, while others have talked about gradual changes. It would seem that the Crusades could fit both explanations. The First Crusade was the occasion of the initial widespread massacres of Jews in western Europe and could be seen as a sharp break with the past. Alternately, the Crusading period lasted long enough to fit a theory of incremental transformation as well, if one wanted to see it as the context of the worsening Jewish status. A typical view of the impact of the Crusades on Jewish life is that of Salo W. Baron, who began his discussion of the "Age of Crusades" in the following manner:

The Crusading Church at Home and Abroad

The first fifteen years of the twentieth century may some day be remembered in America as the Age of Crusades. There were a super-abundance of zeal, a sufficiency of causes, unusual moral idealism, excessive confidence in mass movements, and leaders with rare gifts of popular appeal. The people were ready to cry “God wills it” and set out for world peace, prohibition, the progressive party, the ‘New Freedom’ or ‘the World for Christ in this Generation.’ The air was full of banners and the trumpets called from every camp. It was a brave time in which to be alive.