ABSTRACT
Medieval armies, like their modern counterparts, travelled with clergy who were responsible for the spiritual health of the warriors. They certainly travelled with Carolingian and crusading armies to discharge that function.1 As has been seen, ‘Benedictus’ included specific provision that bishops and priests could travel with armies in order that they might hear confession.2 The unglamorous but essential business of dealing with the proper treatment of the dead must also have preoccupied them. Archbishop Turpin, though dying of his own wounds, was said to have twice blessed the dead peers of France on the battlefield of Roncesvaux.3 It seems highly likely that these basic priestly functions were the primary duty of many of the clerics who appear in our sources attached to armies, though they might find themselves carrying out other duties as required, such as the unnamed monks who carried messages between William and Harold before Hastings.4 For the most part, such activities attracted little attention from the authors of our sources, presumably because they were a matter of routine. There are only a handful of occasions on which it is stated specifically that this was the reason for a cleric’s presence.5 In fact, in almost every instance on which there are depictions of clerics’ spiritual powers used in warfare, the stated or implied purpose was to achieve victory over the enemy. Despite growing interest in medieval warfare as a religious and cultural experience, however, there has been almost no work on the use by prelates of their sacred powers in battle. There was, however, a fine line between prayer and combat, a line blurred constantly by the language of militia Christi. Medieval clergy, after all, were the servants of a God who intervened routinely in the course of war, whose favour could be sought and earned and whose intervention was often regarded as the primary cause of victory or defeat. While a modern analyst may doubt their efficacy, prayer, excommunication, benediction or the presence of relics on the battlefield were often intended to alter the physical course of warfare. Like the organisation of warriors and the possession of fortresses, the use of spiritual weapons must be considered an aspect of military history.
