Grad's Guide to Life Book

MacEvitt introduces the concept of "rough tolerance" to situate his work between camps that viewed the treatment of local Christians by the crusaders as either tolerant or oppresive. He leans heavily into the assimilationist camp, but tempers this view with the violence that the franks occasionally used against their subjects. The culture of silence is stressed here: the latins did not attempt to divide up their subjects, and local Christians did not compile lists of Latin crimes. The crusaders did not target whole groups, in contrast to the contemporary west that was categorizing heretics and Jews, and instead integrated some of them and lived with the rest of them. This all came apart in the 1160s, though, as Byzantine attempts to reconcile the eastern churches with Constantinople broke the silence and brought differences to the surface.