I am sorry for taking so long to get this up. I finally finished the chapter in which he arrives at the siege of Acre and hoped to have the new blog up this weekend.
So of course Merlin, my evil computer, chose that time for another one of his major meltdowns. This one was so infuriating and frustrating that I have decided to re-christen the misnamed Merlin. From now on he is officially known as the Demon-Spawn.
Raimond is a truly tragic figure, for like Richard III, his reputation and his memory ended up in the hands of his enemies. Once again history was rewritten by the victors—in this case the Papacy and the French Crown. Raimond was a man of culture, well educated, a poet, more of a politician than a soldier, with a fatal flaw for someone living in the MA. Although he was a practicing Catholic himself, he was tolerant of other religious practices and allowed his subjects to follow the beliefs of the Cathars, a religious sect that enjoyed considerable popularity in the south of France.
He was to pay a terrible price for that tolerance, a price he continues to pay to this day, for there are no Raimond de St Gilles societies seeking to clear his name; in that Richard was luckier than Raimond. I will discuss this in greater depth in a later blog. Theirs is a story that should not be forgotten. I have some books to recommend. It is not for the faint of heart, as it often makes grim reading.
But I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about this very timely subject. He delves into the so-called Code of Chivalry and how it was rarely applied to non-combatants, and he also looks at the wider picture—the psychological motivations of medieval soldiers and the bonding experienced by men at war.
