ABSTRACT

Situated on the far reaches of Latin Christendom, the crusader states witnessed daily contact between numerous religious groupings, both between subjected peoples and their Frankish rulers, and regarding travellers passing in and out of the latter’s territories. Though this most obviously included Muslim communities, it also meant engaging with Eastern Christian populations whose presence far pre-dated, and extended beyond the limits of, Frankish authority. This posed distinct challenges for the ruling elites of Latin polities in imposing and maintaining power. This article discusses these difficulties by examining the nature of inter-Christian, or more specifically Latin–Syriac, contact in the principality of Antioch and county of Edessa, through theoretical frameworks proposed in Thomas Nail’s 2016 Theory of the Border. It will be argued that the realities of human movement in such a diverse and topographically fragmented region left little chance for impermeable borders between the Christian communities who lived there.

摘要

位于拉丁基督教世界的远端，十字军国家见证了众多宗教团体之间的日常接触，包括受制人民与其法兰克统治者之间，以及进出后者领土的旅行者。虽然这最明显地包括穆斯林社区，但这也意味着与东方基督徒群体接触，这些群体的存在远远早于法兰克当局的范围，并超出了法兰克当局的范围。这对拉丁政体的统治精英在施加和维持权力方面提出了明显的挑战。本文通过托马斯·奈尔 (Thomas Nail) 2016 年边界理论 (Theory of the Border) 中提出的理论框架，通过研究安条克公国和埃德萨郡 (Edessa) 的基督徒间接触的性质，或更具体地说，拉丁语-叙利亚语接触的性质来讨论这些困难. 有人会争辩说，在如此多样化和地形分散的地区，人类运动的现实几乎没有机会在居住在那里的基督教社区之间建立不可渗透的边界。