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The Global Dispatches
Expert Commentary and Analysis
Battle of Poitiers and the invention of Europeans
By Alessandro Barbero, March 8, 2015
Charles de Steuben's Bataille de Poitiers in October 732 depicts a triumphant Charles Martel (mounted) facing 'Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi (right) at the Battle of Tours.
Professor of Medieval History Alessandro Barbero examines a defining moment in European history, the Battle of Poitiers in 732 AC when Charles Martel defeated the "wali" of al-Andalus.
One of the most celebrated battles in Europe's history was fought in October 732, or possibly 733, on the ancient Roman road linking Tours to Poitiers in the area the ancients called Gaul, then beginning to be known as France. Led by the Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, the Franks defeated the Arab army headed by Abd al-Rahman, the wali of al-Andalus, Arab Spain's governor-general, who would meet his death on the battlefield. In 1902 the distinguished German military historian Hans Delbrück wrote of the action that many call the battle of Poitiers – but which others, especially in the English-speaking world, prefer to call the battle of Tours – "there was no more important battle in the history of the world".
And in truth two of the most powerful and belligerent peoples of the High Middle Ages clashed in that place, the founders of two empires who were carving up the European world and the Mediterranean. As they marched along the Roman road the men of al-Andalus, after setting fire to the Basilica of Saint Hilary in Poitiers, found themselves face to face with the most powerful of the barbarians who had taken possession of the Western Roman Empire, the same Franks who shortly afterwards, with the coronation of Charlemagne, would pose as the heirs and successors of Rome. Their language and customs could not have been more different yet in some respects the Arabs and Franks resembled each other: both were accustomed to war, both admired good swordsmanship, and both were convinced that the one God, in whom they all believed, would protect them against all enemies. "Long live Christ who loves the Franks", we read in the prologue to the Salic Law, written only about ten years later; as for the Arabs, God himself had assured their prophet that if they believed in him they would triumph over their enemies, and he had given this assurance in Arabic.
These two peoples devoted to God and the sword knew very little about each other, but were sworn enemies nonetheless. In the Latin sources the Arabs were the "perfidious Saracens", the "heinous Agarens", bastard descendants of the slave Hagar. In the Arab sources the Christians of Europe were backward and cruel barbarians, "peoples", an Andalusian scholar would later write, "whom Allah the strong and powerful has marked with violence and ignorance and, as a whole, hostility and injustice". They were also stupid, as was inevitable for those living in such a hostile climate, where the pallor of the sun, the damp, the snow and the ice fashioned monstrous bodies, rough manners and a cold and lethargic nature.
Precisely this trope, but turned on its head, inspires the most celebrated contemporary account of the battle of Poitiers composed by a chronicler writing in Latin in Arab Spain. It is worth remembering that at the time of its writing, the population of al-Andalus had remained largely Christian and churches and monasteries continued to operate relatively undisturbed. Known as the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754, the text recites how the immense army of Abd al-Rahman swept across the Pyrenees "crushing the mountains as though they were plains", but when it found itself confronted with the Franks it hesitated for a week before joining battle. Then it attacked; but its enemies – gentes septentrionales – transforming their slow, cold nature into a strength, remained motionless as a wall, impenetrable as polar ice. Ever since the text was rediscovered in the sixteenth century the image of the Franks standing like a "wall of ice", which for the Andalusian chronicler must have evoked the Nordic otherness of that remote people, has been used by historians in desperate pursuit of details, of which there are so few, to embellish the story of that famous battle.
The Arab sources called it "Balât ash-Shuhada" or "pavement of Martyrs", because so many warriors perished on the stones of the old Roman road. They add that Abd al-Rahman himself "died a martyr in a hostile country in the month of Ramadan 114", a date that reminds us of just how young that people was, whose religion had been in existence for barely over one hundred years. But the most interesting episode is also in the Mozarabic Chronicle, when it describes what happened the day after the victory. In the morning, it narrates, the "Europeans" (Europenses) left their encampment braced for further battle and saw that the enemy had vanished. For a while they feared a trap but when they realized that the Saracens had truly gone, they divided the spoils left behind on the battlefield and returned home victorious. These "Europeans", added the chronicler, were not sharp enough to worry about pursuing the enemy after they had won. The account, as we can see, is steeped in the prejudices that the inhabitants of al-Andalus nurtured towards their Northern neighbours, and it is not at all evident that the author considers himself to be a European; but he is a Christian, and for him the victory of the Europeans is an event to be celebrated.
Not surprisingly this text has received a lot of attention, not least because in it the adjective Europenses makes its first recorded appearance. The ancient Romans, of course, knew that the world was divided into three continents – Europe, Asia and Africa – but they did not attribute much importance to this geographical division since their empire extended to the three corners of the world. Only after the Barbarian invasions did the Christians in the West, who spoke Latin and found themselves cut off from their brothers in the East, consider Europe's identity to be a value: in a letter to Pope Gregory the Great, the Irish missionary St Columba called him "most august flower of the whole of withering Europe"; in turn, Pope Gregory, writing to the Basileus Maurice, complained of Europe's "enslavement to the law of the barbarians".
The appearance of these Europenses in the Mozarabic Chronicle is therefore certainly not inexplicable. On the contrary, it is the logical outcome of a secular process that witnessed the gradual withdrawal of the Latin civilization to the West and North under the protection of the "barbarians". The process was sanctioned in AD 800 with the imperial coronation of Charlemagne, transforming the Frankish King into a Roman Emperor; but even before that momentous day, many associated the name of Charlemagne with the notion of Europe. As early as 775 the priest Cathwulf – another Irishman – expressed the hope that he would reign "in honorem glorie regni Europe". The learned Alcuin praised him for having spread Christianity, with his victories "in partibus Europae". And on the eve of his coronation in St Peter's an anonymous poet hailed the "rex pater Europae". The turning point is clear to see: if at the time of Pope Gregory the Great the clergy saw Europe as a continent adrift, a raft that the barbarian invasions had sundered from the body of the Christian empire, now this view was turned on its head. Europe was God's most beloved part of the Christian world, and the proof is that God allowed the infidels to conquer almost all the rest, but at the shores of Europe he stopped them, precisely at Poitiers, thanks to the might of Charles Martel.
The Middle Ages would preserve this memory of the battle without, however, attributing it any value as a turning point. The Medieval culture believed, yes, in the decisive battles, but not because they changed the course of history: only God could decide that, and the battles won or lost only served to reveal his will to men. It was necessary to wait for the Renaissance before historians, such as the Bollandist creators of the Acta Sanctorum, began to speak of a miracle; and it was necessary to wait for French nationalism, from the seventeenth century onwards, for Charles and his followers to become the protagonists in a decisive turning point in the world's history, the "liberators of the human race", as François Mézeray called them in his Histoire de France, published in Paris in 1643.
In the France of the Sun King some sceptical souls continued to take a more relaxed view of events. The Cardinal of Retz, Jean-François de Gondi, commented in his Mémoires that it would not have been such a bad thing if the Saracens had conquered France: had Charles Martel not moved to exterminate them "they could have introduced a taste for science and the arts". But very few were so light-hearted. Those thinkers who no longer believed in Providence believed in facts, and concluded that if the Franks had lost the battle of Poitiers the history of the world would have been altered forever. As Voltaire observed in his Essay on the Manner and Spirit of Nations, without Charles Martel, "France would have been a Muslim province". On the other side of the English Channel, Gibbon went even further. For him, Poitiers was the event "that rescued our ancestors of Britain and our neighbours of Gaul from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran". In a celebrated example of counterfactual history he imagines what would have happened if the battle had been won by Abd al-Rahman: "Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford".
In the nineteenth century illustrious thinkers vied to reiterate that the event was an epochal one: "Europe at this day owes its existence, its religion, and its liberty, to the victory gained over the Saracens before Poitiers, by Charles the Hammer" (Sismondi); "the arm of Charles Martel saved and delivered the Christian nations of the West from the deadly grasp of all-destroying Islam" (Schlegel); "one of the major events of History: had the saracens won, the world would have been Mahometan" (Chateaubriand). In 1851 Sir Edward Creasy invented a historical genre whose popularity endures to this day, publishing the The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo, and naturally including Poitiers, which according to him "rescued Christendom from Islam [and] preserved the relics of ancient and the germs of modern civilization".
In the twentieth century the legend of Poitiers became part of the American political culture and was used to justify some of its most muscular initiatives. In 1916 the former President Theodore Roosevelt, in his book eloquently titled Fear God And Take Your Own Part, declared that civilization survived only wherever Christians succeeded in rebutting Islam blow by blow, as the Westerners did at Poitiers, while the lily-livered Christians in the East were overcome. More recently, Republican Congressman Allen West was of the same opinion; an Afro-American and former career military officer, he resigned from the army following allegations of maltreatment of prisoners in Iraq. In 2011 he explained in a press conference that the good battle is still always the same one: "You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why he was fighting the Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732?"
But this, of course, is America. I don't know how many Europeans feel the need today to continue to hail Charles Martel as the saviour of Europe. The legend of Poitiers is destined to become increasingly embarrassing as a growing share of European citizens can hardly recognize the Franks as their ancestors. A writer of Maghreb origin, Salah Guemriche, has already sparked controversy in France by publishing the historical novel, Abd er-Rahman contre Charles Martel. La véritable histoire de la bataille de Poitiers, in which the two sides are inverted and the French are the baddies. The author has declared he wrote it because he could no longer stand Charles Martel – ever since as a boy in the 1950s, in an Algeria still under French rule, his teachers used to drill it into the students that "Charles Martel crushed the Arabs in Poitiers". Perhaps inverting the parts is not the right answer, but the Cardinal of Retz, for one, would not have taken particular exception to Guemriche's account; and the Cardinal, after all, was nothing if not European.
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Alessandro Barbero teaches Medieval History at the University of Piedmont Orientale, in Vercelli. Among his books are: The Battle. History of Waterloo (Laterza, 2011) Schibsted Forlag (Norway) – Mets & Schilts (Netherlands) – Grove Atlantic (UK) – Flammarion (France) – Destino (Spain) – BIC ALL (Romania); 9 August 378: The Day of the Barbarians (Laterza, 2012) Agerings Bokforlag (Sweden) – Flammarion (France) – Ariel (Spain) – Mets & Schilt (Netherlands) – Grove Atlantic (UK); and Lepanto. The battle of the three empires (Laterza, 2012).
Translation by Alice Chambers
Article courtesy of Eutopia
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My new tagline is "organize your attitude," because I think our own mindset as moms is crucial in our homes.
Charlotte Mason said that fully 1/3 of our children's curriculum is atmosphere, and though candles and art on the wall are nice touches, I believe that it is our own attitudes as we go about our business that creates the atmosphere our kids grow up in. Mom sets the tone, whether we like it or not.
We feel the weight of responsibility in raising our children. We feel the pressure of giving each one what they require for both mind and body. We feel the tension of keeping house while allowing the house to be used.
Are we going to add, on top of that, the burden of a requirement to bear it all cheerfully?
That is how I felt when I was first convicted of my stinky attitude and listlessness. I didn't want to face up to what I knew was true: I was responsible for my attitude. I told my children to change theirs. I told them they weren't obeying all the way if they weren't obeying with a good attitude.
Oh botheration. That applied to me, too.
So, I wanted to share the three keys I found to overcoming my listlessness and my grumpiness. It's not that I am not never grouchy, of course, but it is no longer (or, much less often) characteristic of my attitude and when I start falling off that cliff, I know the handholds to reach for to climb back up to the right path.
They summarize exactly what our attitudes should be.
It is a daunting list. We can't nail down a single one of them, much less all seven.
But growing in them is sanctification, which is God's will for us.
This is really what it's all about: opportunities to exercise, to practice, these virtues. We mortify our fleshly responses and choose to obey instead. That is organizing our attitude.
You don't have to wallow in whatever comes naturally in order to be real and authentic. Being an authentic follower of Jesus results in us choosing His mind rather than our own, His glory rather than our own pride.
And, it is only because of Jesus that we can choose the right mindset in the first place.
Jesus pours out His Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit brings the fruit with Him. These are not responses we have to gin up on our own, because we can't – that is faking and will wear us down. These are responses given to us by grace that we can walk in and grow up into.
Asking for the fruit of the Spirit is a prayer God will answer. And that is how we get the grace in the middle of the muddle to do the right thing.
One key concept that helped me align my attitude with truth was realizing that God's Providence was a truth I could rest in. That is, not rest as in sit back, do nothing, and hope vaguely for the best. But rather one reason my attitude was wound so tight and tense was that I thought that parenting and educating my children meant that it was all on me. How could it both be true that I could do well or I could mess it up and be true that God is in control and will work His purposes with or without me?
How does the knowledge of God's Providence comfort you?
with His precious blood and set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
My children, my home, my responsibilities, are given to me as a way to exercise gratitude and faithful stewardship, and God is working through them to grow me and through me to grow them. If I start making it about results other than responding in faith to what is in front of me, I've gotten off track. The work is mine, the results are God's. I have to say, "I will do what I know I should do and I trust God to do whatever He wants with that." How things pan out and how situations unfold is God's gig. I don't earn outcome 1 or outcome 2 based on my work. I do reap what I sow, but all of it is leading to further repentance and dependence. Because that's God's will for our lives.
that nothing can separate us from God's love.
The Heidelberg has gratitude as a key focus throughout. Come to think of it, so does Scripture.
God's people giving thanks occurs consistently throughout both Old and New Testaments. It is a consistent theme.
Gratitude lifts us up out of ourselves. It gives us perspective, it forces us to not take ourselves seriously or think we are the focal point ourselves. It moves the focus to God as our source of all things. We can give thanks and acknowledge that He knows what He's doing, even if we don't – it's an act of trust and faith. It builds trust and faith.
Thanksgiving is to be our motivator, our underlying posture and attitude, and our response.


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The Stash/Politics/South Dakota Voted for Legal Marijuana. So Why Can't People Buy it?
South Dakota Voted for Legal Marijuana. So Why Can't People Buy it?
Estimates say marijuana might not hit shelves in South Dakota for another year.
by Marie Edinger– September 10, 2021
Voters chose to legalize both recreational and medicinal marijuana in the November 2020 election, making South Dakota the first state in the nation to do so. Yet the fight for access continues.
Before the two laws passed, South Dakota state law labeled possession of a small amount of marijuana as a Class 1 misdemeanor, for which you can earn a year of a jail time and a $2,000 fine.
Matthew Schweich is with South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws. The Marijuana Policy Project and New Approach PAC formed that group in 2019 and were successful the next year in getting voters to approve marijuana laws. But then the Governor of South Dakota started chipping away at their success.
"She decided to wage a war against both of these initiatives," said Schweich.
Legal Battles Over Recreational Cannabis
The marijuana ballot initiative that legalized recreational cannabis in South Dakota was called Amendment A. It legalized the right to for people over the age of 21 to possess and purchase up to one ounce of marijuana and cultivate up to six of their own plants at home. It also designated the State Department of Revenue as the body that would issue marijuana licenses, and it created a 15% tax on marijuana sales. That money would go first to paying for the Department's marijuana program itself, and the remaining profits would be divided equally between public schools and South Dakota's General Fund.
Amendment A passed with over 54% of the vote, with 34,783 more South Dakotans saying they want legal recreational cannabis than those who said they did not want it. For comparison, Governor Kristi Noem won with just 51% of the vote.
But just a few weeks after the November election in which voters approved Amendment A, people operating at Governor Noem's direction filed a lawsuit arguing Amendment A is too broad, and thus violates the state's constitution.
"Essentially, they're saying it was too wide a policy, that it violates the single subject rule that applies to initiative," explained Schweich. "They're also arguing it represents a fundamental change to South Dakota's system of government, which would require a constitutional amendment, which is a preposterous argument."
A Circuit Court ruled against Amendment A, but an appeal sent the decision to the South Dakota Supreme Court. So far, the Supreme Court hasn't made a decision on the case, which means the cannabis program cannot move forward in the meantime. It was supposed to start up by July 1st of 2021.
Medical Cannabis in South Dakota
Measure 26 established a medical marijuana program applicable to South Dakotans with a debilitating medical condition diagnosed by a physician. Those with medical marijuana cards could possess up to three ounces of marijuana and could cultivate three plants at their home, or more if a physician prescribes it. It passed with nearly 70% of the vote.
Governor Noem launched a legislative effort to delay the implementation of Measure 26, trying to get a bill passed to undo what voters had chosen. That bill passed in the House but ultimately failed, so the state's medical program is moving forward.
Since then, Governor Noem has changed her tune and seems to be supporting medical marijuana. On Facebook, she posted a video advocating for the policy, saying, "I want South Dakota to have the best, most patient-focused medical cannabis program in the country. I've heard from people who are hurting and are hopeful for relief. My team is 100% committed to starting this program as quickly and responsibly as possible for South Dakota."
The law's confirmation offers limited protections for medical marijuana consumers. The problem there is, patient ID cards aren't available yet.
Home Cultivation of Cannabis
There's also been a fight over whether to strip the portions of Amendment A and Measure 26 that allow for limited home cultivation of marijuana. Right now, that provision is still included in Measure 26, but lawmakers in a Medical Marijuana Study Subcommittee recommended language around home cultivation be rescinded. State representatives argue home-grown cannabis could be sold on the black market.
"It doesn't make sense," said Schweich. "What do you think the black market is right now? You think you're creating the problem of people growing cannabis outside of a regulated system? No. It already exists."
South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws feels the fears over home cultivation are irrational, and believes having smaller plant count limits will keep illegal grow operations from thriving.
"Cannabis is going to be bought and sold whether it's legal or not. You might as well tax it and use that revenue to do good things and reduce the need for future tax increases in other areas," said Schweich.
The Will of the People
Governor Noem didn't express concern that the new laws violated the state's constitution until after they were passed.
"She's saying that she doesn't care what the voters of South Dakota decided about this issue," said Schweich, who argues marijuana legalization is more popular than the Governor herself.
The Governor's lawsuits are paid for with taxpayer dollars. Schweich says the Governor is trampling on the will of the people.
"If it was really all about this constitutional question, then she would have encouraged the legislature to pass the recreational law as a statute, and then we could move on. But she hasn't done that. She has a personal vendetta against legalization, and she thinks that she can get away with getting away her constituents and spending their money to overturn a law that they passed."
"Governor Noem has spent so much time presenting herself as a defender of personal freedom when it comes to the pandemic, but when it comes to cannabis, she does not believe in personal freedom," said Schweich. "She wants the government to block people up. That is not freedom."
The Loophole
Native American reservations are sovereign governments and are not subject to state laws, so even though legal marijuana is held up in South Dakota's courts, there is already a dispensary open. The Flandreau Santee Sioux set up a medical dispensary in an old police station on their reservation. The Native Nationals Cannabis Dispensary is owned and operated by the tribe in Flandreau, about forty minutes from Sioux Falls.
That dispensary is only accessible for medical clients, who pay $50 for a license from a certified doctor. However, the Tribe honors medical cards from people outside the Reservation; you don't have to be part of the Tribe to access the dispensary. Instead, you have to be diagnosed with a "chronic or debilitating disease or medical condition" or "any condition that, in the opinion of a practitioner, a patient would likely benefit from the use or marijuana" such as AIDS, anorexia, arthritis, cancer, glaucoma, or migraine.
The State Supreme Court posts its rulings every Thursday. As of Thursday September 9th, the day The Stash spoke with South Dakotans for Better Marijuana Laws, no ruling had been posted regarding Amendment A's constitutionality.
So what if the Supreme Court decides Amendment A was, in fact, unconstitutional?
"We'll go back to the ballot and win again," said Schweich. That vote would be in November 2022, the same election where Governor Noem will vie for her seat.
As for when medical marijuana will be available, it's difficult to say. The South Dakota Department of Health is still working on medical marijuana cards. Those are supposed to be done by November. The Department also has to develop a system for licensing businesses, and there are groups pushing them to move forward with that. Schweich expects there will still be fights ahead on the medical marijuana side.
If and when the fight is over, legal cannabis is expected to bring in millions of dollars in tax revenue to South Dakota's local and state governments. The new industry would also create jobs both directly and indirectly – of course, people working within the industry would have new opportunities; but it would also create new commercial activity for contractors building new facilities, on top of the other specialists like plumbers, HVAC specialist, compliance and security firms, and more.
South Dakota Voted for Legal Marijuana. So Why Can't People Buy it? was last modified: September 10th, 2021 by Marie Edinger
Marie Edinger
Marie Edinger is an award-winning multimedia journalist. Originally from Gainesville, Florida, she stayed there to attend the University of Florida, graduating in three years after studying Telecommunications and Spanish Linguistics. She worked for t...

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