Abstract
Not celebrity, not iconic status, not presence, not animal magnetism; pop-stardom, least of all—charisma is none of these. According to Max Weber, who picked up the idea and ran with it, personal charisma is a particular kind of authority, one which does not depend on office, whether inherited or elective. It is a gift. For some, a gift of God. Once recognized, it compels assent. “The holder of charisma… demands obedience and a following by virtue of his mission” (my italics).1 That must be stressed: commentators neglect the degree to which a sense of mission is incorporated in charismatic attraction. Charisma overpowers, rather than persuades. Followers do not so much consent to charismatic authority, as succumb to it.
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Notes
Max Weber, “The Sociology of Charismatic Authority” in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1970), pp. 245–52, here at p. 246.
Marie-Thérèse Kaiser-Guyot, Le berger en France aux xive et xve siècles (Editions Klincksieck: Paris, 1974), pp. 116–17.
Dr. Michael L. Ryder, author of Sheep and Man (Duckworth: London, 1983), kindly supplied this information.
See Émile Mâle, Notre-Dame de Chartres (Flammarion: Paris, 1963), pp. 28–9.
See James Lea Cate, “The English Mission of Eustace of Flay (1200–1201),” in Études d’Histoire dédiées à la mémoire de Henri Pirenne (ed. François Louis Ganshof, et al.) (Nouvelle Société d’Éditions: Brussels, 1937), pp. 67–89.
Michel Mollat (ed.), Histoire de l’Ile-de-France et de Paris (Privat: Toulouse, 1971), p. 117.
See Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “The Cult of Saint Denis and the Capetian Kings,” Journal of Medieval History, Vol. 1 (1975), pp. 43–70; idem., The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: A Survey (Classical Folia Editions: Brookline, Mass., 1978).
Elizabeth A.R. Brown and M.W. Cothren, “The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window of the Abbey of Saint-Denis,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 49 (1986), pp. 1–40 and pls 1–12.
Heinrich Gross, Gallia Judaica: dictionnaire géographique de la France d’après les sources rabbiniques (reprinted with a supplement by Simon Schwarzfuchs), (Philo Press: Amsterdam 1969), pp. 151, 454, 602–4.
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© 2008 Gary Dickson
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Dickson, G. (2008). History: Charisma. In: The Children’s Crusade. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230592988_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230592988_4
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