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A 5 page book review. In his text, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, historian David Nirenberg addresses the persecution of Jews, Muslims and lepers that occurred during the Shepherd's Crusade of 1320 and 1321 in the south of France and in the crown of Aragon (Spain). Nirenberg relates that the traditional perspective on the violence perpetrated against minorities during this period is that this violence was irrational. His principal thesis is that an alternative perspective--one endeavors to discern how the participants of this Crusade viewed their actions as rational--is more enlightening and offers insight. No additional sources cited.
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the Shepherds Crusade of 1320 and 1321 in the south of France and in the crown of Aragon (Spain). Nirenberg relates that the traditional perspective on the violence perpetrated against
minorities during this period is that this violence was irrational. His principal thesis is that an alternative perspective--one endeavors to discern how the participants of this Crusade viewed their actions
as rational--is more enlightening and offers insight. Nirenberg points out that the traditional stance towards the violence of the Shepherds Crusade carries with it the implied assumption that there
is no need to study this historical event and its accompanying sociological phenomena. "If violence against minorities is without reason, then there is no need to study the contexts within
which the violence occurred or look for conflicts that might have caused it" (Nirenberg 43). He says that the logical result of such an assumption is that the "interpretative landscape
becomes monotonously flat" (Nirenberg 43). On the other hand, Nirenberg asks the question: "How would it affect our understanding of the events of 1320 and 1321 if we assumed that
the killers had motives, that their actions had meaning and that this meaning is decipherable from context" (Nirenberg 43). This question sets the basic parameters for this investigation of
the Shepherds Crusade, as Nirenberg posits that this was, indeed, the case, that is, that the poor people who enacted the violence of the Shepherds Crusade against minorities were acting
from what they perceived as rational political motivations, then investigation into this era can provide insight into its internal motivating factors. Therefore, Nirenberg proposes that there were reasons behind fourteenth
century persecutions and his text asks what these reasons might have been. His investigation entails a detailed examination of numerous primary sources. For example, according to a sixteenth-century Jewish chronicler,
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