A Song, from Debt during the Crusades

Michael Hudson is a prolific writer. He is already onto his next book dealing with Debt in the Crusades, while the previous one is hardly dry from the printers. We are exceedingly fortunate to get snippets of the new material, which is captivating.

This is a song that we all know. And if we do not know the song, we know the ditty, and of course, the rhythm is catchy and soon you tap your feet to it.

This is a story right from the crusades would you believe it? And would you believe it, this dark bloodthirsty Dark Ages, inquisitions and harsh punitive tones of the crusades, had its points of light as well. One can almost think of ‘democratic countries’ and supposed ‘autocratic countries’ in the modern version of an age-old story.

The Albigensian Inquisition is celebrated in the chart-topping ditty “Dominique,” popular throughout Europe in 1963-64, and by Debbie Reynolds in the 1966 movie The Singing Nun. Its lyrics open with: “In the age when John Lackland was the king of England, Our father, Dominix, fought the Albigensians.” (Lyrics below) The Dominicans were often referred to as the Preaching Order and worked closely with the papacy.

Canon 3 of Lateran IV upheld the council of Avignon (1209) endorsing the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) against the Cathars in Southern France, a prosperous region extending westward to Catalonia in Moorish Spain. The Arab trade traversing it in the 11^th and 12^th centuries had brought a cultural intermixing that produced the poetry of the troubadours. It also brought a dualistic Gnostic view of worldly greed and selfishness, related to the Bogomils (a 10^th-century Bulgarian sect) and a similar reaction from Asia Minor against worldly wealth, rejecting ecclesiastical as well as secular authority.

Languedoc became the venue for creating the Inquisition at the hands of the Dominican Order. The Papal Dictates of 1054 gave popes the power to impose religious uniformity throughout Christendom by defining whatever they opposed as heresy, and the Inquisition’s initial aim was to destroy Catharist theology as a threat to papal authority. The destruction of Catharist and Bogomil writings prevents us from understanding just how their theology reflected their political attitudes and living conditions. What has survived is only what their detractors have written. The Treatise Against the Bogomils by Cosmas the Priest suggests a rebellious dualistic spirit familiar from North Africa’s Donatist revolts against Augustinian theology in the 4^th and 5^th centuries to Europe’s peasant revolts from the 14^th to 16^th centuries: “They teach their followers not to obey their masters; they scorn the rich, they hate the Tsars, they ridicule their superiors, they reproach the boyars, they believe that God looks in horror on those who labour for the Tsar, and advise every serf not to work for his master.”

It is not hard to see here an anti-authoritarian attitude of the common folk characterizing the oppressive power of State and Church as the work of the devil ruling the material world. How could the Lord have let the world become so unfair, if not opposed by a Satanic adversary in a constant fight?

Dominic
Versions: #1#2#3
Dominic, Nic, Nic
Nic, goes along very simply
Traveling in poverty and singing.
On every road, in every place,
He just talks about the Lord,
He just talks about the Lord.

In the age when John Lackland
Was the king of England,
Our father, Dominix
Fought the Albigensians.