Religious Horror and Holy War in Viking Age Francia
by Matthew Bryan Gillis
Religious Horror and Holy War in Viking Age Francia explores how authorities in western Francia used horror rhetoric to cast Christian soldiers, who robbed the poor and the church, as monsters that devoured human flesh and drank human blood. Adapting modern literary horror approaches to medieval sources, this study reveals how such rhetoric served as a form of spiritual weaponry in the clergy’s attempts to correct and condemn wayward military men. This investigation, therefore, unearths long-forgotten Carolingian thought about the dreadful spiritual reality of internal enemies during a time of political division and the Northmens depredations. Yet such horror also informed a new understanding of Christian heroism that developed in relation to the wars fought against the invaders. This vision of heroic soldiers, which included military martyrs, culminated in ideas about holy war against the pagans. Thus Carolingian religious horror and holy war together belonged to a body of ideas about the spiritual, unseen side of the church’s cosmic conflict against evil that foreshadowed later medieval Crusading thought.
- By (author) Matthew Bryan Gillis
"Gillis has written a vital book that takes a moment of crisis in the late ninth century and transforms how we think about not just the Viking attacks but much else. The Franks were enmeshed in violence and Gillis is one of the first to really theorize what that meant, how horror can help us understand not just how they thought about war, politics, and religion, but also how the centuries that followed built upon those foundation stones and further developed an idea of Christian holy war that crescendoed in the twelfth century." Gabriele, Matthew, Professor of Medieval Studies, Dept. of Religion & Culture, Virginia Tech "Matthew Gillis is one of the most creative historians working today in any field. His application of the theories and literature of horror to Carolingian texts allows him and his readers to find new insights in the material. It will be particularly valuable for showing how the Carolingians and ideas of horror helped shape the early doctrine of holy war." Rubenstein, Jay, Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Premodern World, University of Southern California
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