Re: Niggling away at the edges (related to Homemade bullet proof vest)

James A. Donald
Charles the great was crowned holy Roman emperor in 800 AD, so from
800AD, it was under his rule, at least in the sense that the Christian
fighting men of Spain paid him honor and purported to be obedient to
him.

David Friedman
So you assert, and it might even be true, but I don't think you have
offered any evidence.

The chief Christian fighting man of Spain asked for his assistance and
sent him a portion of the spoils of war.

James A. Donald:
You seem to imagine
peace, but it was continuous low level war, with numerous periods of
high level war.

David Friedman
I think that clearly wasn't true in general;

You think a lot of things that are mighty odd. Any history of the
reign of Charles the great will give you lots of accounts of Saracen
troops heading a long way west into Europe, and Christian troops
heading a long way east into Spain, with the result that there was no
well defined border. That was war, and war of a most horrifying and
brutal kind. For there to be peace, they would have had to have
agreed on a border. But there was never any such agreement. No such
agreement, therefore no peace.

After massacre, arson, pillage, and rape there can be no peace without
a peace agreement, or the passage of much time. And there were no
peace agreements, and old injuries were continually aggravated by new
and very grave injuries after rather short passage of time.

I don't know enough about
Iberia in Charlemagne's time to say if it was true there. But if you
read the memoirs of Usamah ibn Munqidh, who is a good deal later and in
the Middle East, it's pretty clear that his world was one where Muslims
fought Muslims and Christians, sometimes with Christian allies,
Christians fought Muslims and Christians, sometimes with Muslim allies,
and there was no general pattern of continuing Christian/Muslim conflict.

With the passage of time, Islam became less warlike - but it took
centuries. In the first few centuries of Islam, there was no peace
with Christendom, merely low level war and high level war.

Today Dubai is entirely comfortable to be at peace with Christians,
and gives mere lip service to being at war with Jews - but most arab
countries give a good deal more than lip service. Peace with
Christendom is undoubtedly acceptable to a great many Muslims, but
even today, they still have to give at least lip service to war with
Israel and Jews in general.

I don't think the existence of states had much to do with the decline of
the HRE. The HRE never had much to do with either Anglo-Saxon or early
Norman England, for instance

I never said one caused the other, but that states started to become
well defined entities at approximately the time that the Holy Roman
Empire became more obviously a fiction.

David Friedman:
You might also consider that Charlemagne's operations in Spain occurred
more than twenty years before he became Holy Roman Emperor

James A. Donald:
Wrong, as usual

The level of warfare between dar al Islam and Christendom escalated
from low level to high level, with Islam overrunning the Spanish
Marches. As a result, Christians in 797AD called upon Charles the
Great to intervene in Spain (Page 329 of "History of Charlemagne") He
was busy conquering the Saxons at the time, but while remaining in
Saxony, despatched a large force to relieve Christians along the
frontier with Islam under the command of his son Louise King of
Aquitaine.

David Friedman:
At which point he was not yet Holy Roman Emperor

Your claim was twenty years. 797 is three years, and the war
continued for a very long time, so the Holy Roman Empire was involved
in high level war with dar al Islam for most or all of the period that
Charles was emperor.

1. You appear to be correct that there was continued conflict between
Charlemagne's forces and Muslim forces after 800. I was thinking of the
earlier expedition and was not aware of the later.

2. I don't think you have yet offered any evidence that Christian rulers
outside of the borders of the HRE regarded Charlemagne as their ruler.
Alphonso seems to have been an ally, not a subject.

The concept of sovereign and sovereignty did not exist in the west in
that era, so asking who was ruler of X was not a meaningful question.
But Charlemagne was the man in charge of the Christian side in that
war, in so far as anyone was in charge.

--
----------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

http://www.jim.com/ James A. Donald
.

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