Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

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conveyance of ideas from one group to another.
Christian teachings also profess some reluctance
about the morality of violence. Jesus, in whose
name the Christian warrior made war, discourages,
if not forbids, attacks against others. He
tells His disciples to “turn the other cheek” and
“love your enemies.” Jesus also shows no interest
in creating a new political order, thereby implying
that He renounces violence or any other
display of force to implement His teachings. He
tells skeptics to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s
and to God what is God’s.” When answering
Pilate’s questions if he is a king, Jesus responds,
“My kingdom is not of this world.” 44
Jesus’ condemnation of violence had particular
impact. Many clergymen and philosophers
believed that violence, regardless of the cause,
brought limited benefit. The historian Jay Rubenstein
explains that prior to the First Crusade in
1095, the Church promoted the doctrine of just
war in which only principalities, at the behest of
their leaders, could fight one another as a last
resort. When war did occur, the killing of soldiers
and noncombatants was, at most, a morally
neutral act, a regrettable event brought on by circumstances
that no one could control or foresee.
The warrior who killed, as he was obligated to
do when in service to his leader, received no special
virtue or promise of reaching heaven. 45 For
some clerics, the fact that the warrior killed at all,
although tolerated in light of war’s exigencies,
proved so reprehensible that it required redress.
As late as 1066, for instance, Norman bishops
commanded that any knight who killed during
the Battle of Hastings had to make penance for
a year. 46
In Spain, the Christians’ reliance on sacred
violence, with priests as convinced as laypeople
that they fought on behalf of God, reveals that
Muslims supplied the justifications that were
lacking in Christian belief. When Christians
California History • volume 90 number 1 2012
went to fight, the duration of their commitment,
and the words they pronounced to sanctify their
efforts, were but Muslim habits recast in new
ways. Even if the written evidence for the transmission
of habits from one group to another is
absent, anthropological theory may document the
exchange.
Elena Lourie says that the concept of “stimulus
diffusion,” or “idea diffusion,” a methodology
first proposed by the anthropologist Alfred
Kroeber, can describe the connections between
Muslims and Christians that witnesses failed to
record. 47 Throughout history, Kroeber says, there
are many examples of different, even hostile
societies, residing side by side, who in time will
adopt one another’s practices. In most instances,
what makes the transaction more likely is that
the donor culture possesses a superior technology
or concept, while the recipient culture is
bereft of any comparable advancement that will
simplify life. But, to complicate matters, even
if the recipient culture acknowledges its rival’s
sophistication and is desirous of taking on better
habits or routines, it will not necessarily emulate
everything it admires. Instead, it will take the
new approaches and alter them according to prevailing
beliefs. In essence, the recipient culture
adopts what it pleases and discards the rest.
On this note, Kroeber explained why the
exchange of ideas could escape comment. The
recipient culture, if disposed to see the donor
culture as an enemy, would not want to acknowledge
its debt to the other. The members of the
recipient culture, then, who have the ability to
document their impressions, would not mention
the exchange for fear of confessing that
they owed their achievements to a rival. Kroeber
concludes, with Lourie in agreement, that if the
transmission of ideas features a recipient culture
loath to admit how it adopted a new way of life,
the “diffusion could take place below the surface
of the historical record.”