Crusades
More general subjects:
Crusader Rhetoric and the Infancy Cycles on Medieval Baptismal Fonts in the Baltic Region
This is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis to demonstrate that the representation of Infancy cycles on twelfth-and-thirteenth-century baptismal fonts was primarily a northern predilection in the Latin West directly influenced by the contemporary military campaigns. The Infantia Christi Corpus a collection of approximately one-hundred-and-fifty fonts verifies how the Danish and Gotland workshops modified and augmented biblical history to reflect the prevailing crusader ideology and rhetoric that dominated life during the Valdemarian era in the Baltic region. The artisans constructed the pictorial programs according to the readings of the Mass for the feast days in the seasons of Advent Christmas and Epiphanytide. The political ambitions of the northern leaders and the Church to create a Land of St. Peter in the Baltic region strategically influenced the integration of Holy Land motifs warrior saints militia Christi and martyrdom in the Infancy cycles to justify the escalating northern conquests.
Neither before nor after in the history of baptismal fonts have so many been ornamented with the Infancy cycle in elaborate pictorial programs. A brief revival of elaborate Infancy cycles occurs on the fourteenth and fifteenth century fonts commissioned for sites previously located in the Christian borderlands east of the Elbe River with the rise of the Baltic military orders and the advancement of the Church authority. This extraordinary study integrates theological liturgical historical and political developments broadening our understanding of what constituted northern crusader art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The Defence of the Faith
Crusading on the Frontiers of Latin Christendom in the Late Middle Ages
This volume focuses on the complex and often overlooked topic of crusading activities and the crusade movement on the fringes of Latin Christendom in the time frame from approximately 1300 to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It covers a period widely considered as a time of significant political cultural and religious changes in Europe. A period in which Western Christianity was on the one hand still expanding (vide Lithuania and the western Rus and later the Spanish Portuguese French and English expansion in the Americas Africa and South-East Asia) and on the other hand facing two mighty opponents: the Ottoman Empire and Muscovy. On its eastern and southeastern frontiers Latin Christian expansion came to a gradual halt — here the West was now largely under siege! Alone the political logistical and ultimately also military feasibility of a large-scale crusade to liberate Jerusalem had now receded into a purely theoretical and practically almost unenforceable far distance. Ranging in scope from the Baltic Sea region to the Balkans and Iberia this book’s nineteen papers explore how these developments influenced the continuation and adaptation of crusading ideas and activities during this later period of crusades.
Through Words, Not Wounds
History and Theology in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia
The chronicle of Henry of Livonia has long been recognized as the single most important source on the early history of Livonia and Estonia in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
The chronicler describes in great detail how the people of the region were subjected to intense campaigns of crusading and mission from the 1180s until the 1220s primarily at the hands of ecclesiastical and secular powers of Northern Germany (Saxony) Denmark and Sweden. The chronicler himself a German cleric named Henry (Henricus) was not only active in recording the events that happened around him. He also took a very active role as a missionary and interpreter among the indigenous population as well as joining the armies of crusaders on campaign making this chronicle both a first-hand account and a very intriguing narrative. Papal missionary politics and theological ideas are intermingled in the chronicle with detailed descriptions of military campaigns raids and sieges making the entire chronicle a fascinating read.
The aim of this book is to clarify the ways in which Henry construes the historical events that he describes portraying them as the continuation of a form of sacred history that was initiated by God in biblical times and continued by clerics and crusaders among Henry’s own peers.
La caduta di Acri 1291
Raccolta delle imprese legate allo sterminio di Acri – Taddeo di Napoli, Storia della desolazione e della distruzione della città di Acri e di tutta la Terra Santa
La caduta di San Giovanni d’Acri nel 1291 che segna la fine degli stati crociati d’Oltremare rappresenta un punto di svolta nella storia medievale già percepito come tale dai contemporanei. Sulla scia immediata dell’evento due scritti narrano e commentano la battaglia: l’anonima Excidii Aconis gestorum collectio (composta probabilmente nel Nord della Francia) e l’Ystoria de desolatione et conculcatione ciuitatis Acconensis et tocius Terre Sancte di Taddeo di Napoli venata di influssi gioachimiti. Entrambi ripercorrono con impressionante vividità le vicende che hanno portato allo scontro e soprattutto la disperata resistenza della città mettendo in scena una molteplicità di personaggi nelle loro dinamiche di collaborazione e dissenso: i maestri degli Ordini Militari i governanti e il patriarca la folla dei combattenti e delle vittime inermi; dall’altra parte i due sultani che si succedono nel corso degli eventi con il loro popolo di “infedeli” sinistri eppure valorosi. Lo stile adottato dall’Anonimo e da Taddeo è improntato a un preziosismo al limite talvolta della comprensibilità che rende ardua la lettura nell’originale latino. La traduzione italiana mette a disposizione in modo più facilmente accessibile due fonti fondamentali per la storia delle crociate e della percezione di esse nella cultura del tempo.
La versione latina originale dei testi qui tradotti è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis con il titolo Excidii Aconis gestorum collectio; Ystoria de desolatione et conculcatione ciuitatis Acconensis et tocius Terre Sancte (CC CM 202) a cura di R.B.C. Huygens (2004). I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.
Risk, Emotions, and Hospitality in the Christianization of the Baltic Rim, 1000–1300
What anxieties did medieval missionaries and crusaders face and what role did the sense of risk play in their community-building? To what extent did crusaders and Christian colonists empathize with the local populations they set out to conquer? Who were the hosts and who were the guests during the confrontations with the pagan societies on the Baltic Rim? And how were the uncertainties of the conversion process addressed in concrete encounters and in the accounts of Christian authors?
This book explores emotional bonding as well as practices and discourses of hospitality as uncertain means of evangelization interaction and socialization across cultural divides on the Baltic Rim c. 1000-1300. It focuses on interactions between local populations and missionary communities as well as crusader frontier societies. By applying tools of historical anthropology to the study of host-guest relations spaces of hospitality emotional communities and empathy on the fronts of Christianization this book offers fresh insights and approaches to the manner in which missionaries and crusaders reflexively engaged with the groups targeted by Christianization in terms of practice ethics and identity.
The Expansion of the Faith
Crusading on the Frontiers of Latin Christendom in the High Middle Ages
This volume offers a comparative approach to the crusade movement on the frontiers of Latin Christendom in the high Middle Ages bringing a regional focus to research on these peripheral phenomena. It features several key questions: Which military campaigns were propagated as crusades on the peripheries of the Christian West? What efforts were made to gain recognition for them as crusades and what effects did these have? What value did the crusade movement have for societies at the fines christianitatis? What role did the cruciatae have in strengthening pan-Western sense of togetherness and solidarity and what role did they have for creation of a crusader and frontier identity? The eighteen papers ranging in scope from the southern and eastern Baltic regions to Iberia Egypt and the Balkans provide new insights into the ways in which crusade rhetoric was reflected in the culture and literature of countries involved in crusading beyond the Holy Land.
Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East
Essays in Honour of Susan B. Edgington
Chronicle Crusade and the Latin East offers a collection of essays exploring three closely connected thematic areas: the narrative traditions surrounding the early crusading movement the influence of these textual traditions on wider processes of medieval historical writing and storytelling and the history of crusading and the Latin East.
In recent years the field of crusade studies has witnessed a significant groundswell of scholarly work with particular emphasis on the narrative construction of crusading deeds in text and song of the important role played by memory and memorialisation in transmitting crusading tales and promoting participation and the nature of life in the Latin states of the East. This volume not only engages with and offer fresh insights into these topics but also serves as a monument to the career of Susan B. Edgington who has done so much to increase modern understanding of crusade narratives and the crusading past and who has made a significant impact on the careers of many scholars. The collection of essays gathered here by established and early career historians Edgington’s friends and students thus furthers the study of both crusading as narrative and crusading as a lived experience.
Crusading, Society, and Politics in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of King Peter I of Cyprus
The King of Cyprus Peter I of Lusignan (1359-1369) was one of the most fascinating figures in the history of the Latin East and the later crusades. He was involved in European power politics his crusading activities brought him into conflict with the Turkish beyliks of Anatolia and the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and his rule was closely linked with broader developments in the Eastern Mediterranean such as the decay of Byzantium the East-West schism and the beginning of the Ottoman expansion in the Balkans. His adventurous life constitutes a captivating case study of court life feudal and chivalric ethos and political culture in the fourteenth century. This volume investigates developments in the Eastern Mediterranean before and during the reign of Peter I from a comparative perspective. It consists of five parts which treat the political diplomatic and ecological context of the crusading movement in the time between the fall of Acre (1291) and the sack of Alexandria (1365) Peter I’s crusading policy and the Alexandrian crusade Cypriot society and court life in the time of Peter I the situation in Muslim-Turkish Anatolia the second target of King Peter’s crusading policy and finally Byzantium its encounter with the Turks the schism of the Churches and theological trends in the time of the Hesychast Controversy.
Three Pilgrimages to the Holy Land
This edition presents English translations of the accounts of three important twelfth-century travellers to the Holy Land the Anglo-Saxon Saewulf and the Germans John of Würzburg and Theoderic based on the edition of the Latin texts. Saewulf travelled to the Holy Land soon after its capture by the First Crusade in 1099. His travelogue framed by accounts of his outward sea journeys from southern Italy to Jaffa and back to Constantinople describes the buildings and holy sites of Jerusalem and its surrounding countryside as they appeared in the early years of the Frankish kingdom before the major building works that characterized the short century of Christian rule over the city were fully under way. In contrast the two German descriptions give more detailed accounts of the transformation that the city and surrounding landscape had undergone and of the new churches and monasteries and their artistic programmes that had been created by the 1160s and 1170s. The translated texts are preceded by an introduction placing the texts in their historical context and are accompanied by brief explanatory notes with bibliographical indications for further information.
The source texts of this volume appeared in Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis as Peregrinationes tres (CC CM 139) edited by R.B.C. Huygens. References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.
Traité sur la prédication de la croisade
Le traité De predicatione crucis composé vers 1266-1268 par Humbert de Romans le cinquième maître général de l’ordre dominicain est sans doute l’instruction la plus détaillée pour les prédicateurs de la croix dont nous disposons. L’auteur donne ses commentaires sur les questions qu’il croit d’être les plus essentielles pour prêcher la croisade sans pourtant donner des sermons prêts à être prononcés: le prédicateur est censé composer le sermon lui-même en utilisant le traité comme manuel. Il procure aussi des extraits de la Bible et des textes non-bibliques pour le même but.
Le texte latin dont on trouvera ici la traduction a été édité dans Humbertus de Romanis De predicatione crucis (Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis 279). Des renvois aux pages correspondantes de l'édition sont fournis dans les marges de cette publication.
Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain
Crusading and western interaction with the Holy Land is often a contentious topic not least because modern popular perception of medieval east-west contact is that it was defined by violence conquest and religious persecution. Building on recent scholarship this collection of essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to the role of crusading and contact with the Holy Land in medieval Britain in order to investigate the myriad ways in which these contacts influenced artistic literary visual and social culture in medieval Britain. By looking at new material and focusing on the domestic response to crusading and the Holy Land the contributions gathered here offer new insights into the influence of these contacts on the medieval British world view as well as their impact on topics such as ideals about masculinity and kingship geographical perception and aspirational codes of conduct for the medieval British elite.
Legacies of the Crusades
Proceedings of the Ninth Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, Odense, 27 June – 1 July 2016, Volume 1
When war ended the hard work began. Crusader warfare was only the beginning for after peace came huge and often fundamental changes for individuals and societies. First it was necessary to establish firm and secure agreements between enemies and take care of prisoners of war and refugees. Soon followed new legal systems and new social groups emerged as old and new families intermarried or entire segments of the population became subordinates under new rulers. And in a longer time perspective the entire physical landscape was changed to conform to and express the beliefs and values of the conquerors.
The military expeditions of the medieval crusades are well studied at different times and in many diverse areas but the consequences for individuals and societies much less. This book opens up a new research area and contributes with 11 studies covering the Middle Eastern crusader states the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea.
The Crusade of King Conrad III of Germany
Warfare and Diplomacy in Byzantium, Anatolia and Outremer, 1146–48
This book represents the first work of history dedicated to the crusade of King Conrad III of Germany (1146-48) emperor-elect of the Western Roman Empire and the most powerful man yet to assume the Cross. Even so many of the people following the king on the Second Crusade were dead before they reached Constantinople and their ranks were devastated in Anatolia. Yet he went on to join with his fellow kings Louis VII of France and Baldwin III of Jerusalem in an attempt to capture the city of Damascus the most powerful Muslim stronghold in southern Syria. Their unsuccessful attack lasted just five days. The recriminations for the many privations and problems the Germans suffered and encountered in Byzantium Anatolia and Outremer were long and loud and have echoed down the ages: German indiscipline and poor leadership Byzantine deceit and duplicity and the self-serving interests of a Latin Jerusalemite nobility were and still are blamed for the various failings of the expedition. Scrutinising the original source evidence to an unparalleled degree and employing a range of innovative multi-disciplinary approaches this work challenges the traditional and more recent historiography at every turn leading to a significantly clearer and appreciably different understanding of the expedition’s complex and much maligned history.
The Crusades: History and Memory
Proceedings of the Ninth Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, Odense, 27 June – 1 July 2016. Volume 2
The crusades have been remembered and commemorated in many ways from the late eleventh century until today. Soon after the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 the fate of the First Crusade inspired literary historiographical and artistic traditions. Participants in the subsequent crusades would look to the first Crusade for inspiration and spiritual guidance while playing out their own ideas of crusading. Since then the crusades have been put to use in very divers ways and for different purposes. This volume explores how the crusades have been remembered revered and ridiculed by those who participated in them and by those who in later periods made use of the crusades as an historical phenomenon. The volume thus traces the memory and legacy of the crusades by putting together essays that focus on the specific ways in which the crusades have been memorized evoked and exploited from the eleventh century until today.
Franks and Crusades in Medieval Eastern Christian Historiography
This volume is an introduction to eleven of the main medieval Eastern Christian historians used by modern scholars to reconstruct the events and personalities of the crusading period in the Levant. Each of the chapters examines one historian and their work(s) and first contains an introductory examination of their life background and influences. This is then followed by a study of their work(s) relevant to the Crusades including the reasons for writing themes and methodology. Such an approach will allow modern researchers to better understand the background and contexts to these texts and thus to reconstruct the past in a more nuanced and detailed way. Written by eleven eminent scholars in their fields and examining chronicles written in Armenian Greek Syriac and Arabic this book will be essential reading for anybody engaged in research on the Crusades as well as Eastern Christian and Islamic history and medieval historiography.
The Crown and the Cross
Burgundy, France, and the Crusades (1095–1223)
The Crown and the Cross examines the heretofore-unstudied role of the French province of Burgundy in the ‘traditional’ era of the crusades from 1095-c.1220. Covering the First Second Third Fourth and Albigensian Crusades in detail it focuses primarily on the Capetian dukes a cadet branch of the French royal family but uncovers substantial lay participation and some crusading traditions among Burgundian noble families as well. The book additionally uses the crusading institution to explore the development of the medieval French monarchy and makes accessible a corpus of scholarship and documents that until now have mostly existed in French or Latin. It concludes that while piety and religion did play a central role in the experience of many everyday Burgundian crusaders the greater political ramifications of the crusading project functioned in subtle and long-lasting ways and had consequences for the entire institution not just Burgundy or France. Of interest to scholars of the crusades French history and the formation of medieval Europe The Crown and the Cross nuances challenges and expands our understanding of the intellectual genealogy of the crusades and their real-world consequences fills a critical gap in the historiography and poses a set of important conclusions and questions for continued study.
John of Garland’s De triumphis Ecclesie
A new critical edition with introduction and translation
This is the first translation in any language of John of Garland’s poem about the historical events of his lifetime (c. 1195- c. 1258) together with revised Latin text introduction and notes. This work gives a vivid picture of Anglo-French relations of studies in Toulouse after the Albigensian Crusade and of the need for faith following Louis’ catastrophic defeat in the Seventh Crusade. John gives us insights into his own life and a stream of stories holy and profane. The translation and notes bring to life for a wide range of medievalists this eye-witness account by an Englishman in France of major events of the age especially 1242-52. They make clear John’s debts to classical authors and to contemporaries especially Alan of Lille and Matthew Paris. Through re-ordering the lines this edition now generates clarity from the single manuscript. It also offers fresh insights and a new perspective on John of Garland himself.
Tre pellegrinaggi in Terrasanta
Le tre descrizioni della Terrasanta crociata riunite in questo volume furono prodotte tra l’inizio del XII secolo - qualche anno dopo la presa europea della Palestina - e il 1170 circa - poco prima della riconquista musulmana di Gerusalemme. La prima quella dell’inglese Saewulf è un vero e proprio resoconto di pellegrinaggio dalla forte impronta personale che con un linguaggio letterariamente spoglio ricorda le vicissitudini sperimentate dall’autore nel suo viaggio per mare e per terra dalla Puglia a Gerusalemme e fin quasi a Constantinopoli. Quelle di Giovanni di Würzburg e di Teodorico sono invece due guide della città santa e di buona parte della Palestina parzialmente sovrapponibili in quanto in gran parte derivate dal celebre trattatello di topografia sacra composto qualche decennio prima dal chierico nazareno Rorgo Fretello. Entrambi gli autori e soprattutto il più raffinato Teodorico si impegnano tuttavia in un processo di rielaborazione e amplificazione del loro modello che viene ad arricchirsi di informazioni originali accumulate nel corso di una reale esperienza di pellegrinaggio testimone dei rinnovati fasti architettonici e urbanistici del regno latino di Gerusalemme.
La versione latina originale dei testi qui tradotti è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis con il titolo Peregrinationes tres. Saewulf John of Würzburg Theodericus (CC CM 139) a cura di R.B.C. Huygens (1994). I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.
Crusading Europe
Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman
The image of the crusades often connotes exoticism and foreign adventuring. However the underlying motivations daily practicalities and lasting impact of the crusades on their European birthplace are equally important. How did European anxieties prejudices and priorities propel the crusading movement? How did crusaders understand and manage the particularly European geographical legal and financial dimensions of their campaigns? How did the crusades mark medieval European architecture spirituality and literature? This volume not only engages these provocative questions but also serves as a monument to the career of Christopher Tyerman who has done so much to integrate European and global crusading history. The collection of essays gathered here by leading crusade historians Tyerman’s friends and former students furthers study of the crusades within their European context highlighting intriguing new directions for teaching and researching the crusades and their impact.
From Carickfergus to Carcassonne
The epic deeds of Hugh de Lacy during the Albigensian Crusade
‘From Carrickfergus to Carcassonne…’ has its genesis in the IRC funded exhibition of the same name which explores the unlikely links between medieval Ulster and Languedoc.
Hinging upon the personal story of a charismatic individual - Hugh de Lacy earl of Ulster ‘From Carrickfergus to Carcassonne’ explores the wider interplay between the Gaelic Angevin Capetian and Occitan worlds in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
This book brings to light new research linking de Lacy to a conspiracy with the French king and details his subsequent exile and participation in the Albigensian Crusade in the south of France. The combined papers in this volume detail this remarkable story through interrogation of the historical and archaeological evidence benefitting not just from adept scholarly study from Ireland and the UK but also from a Southern French perspective. The ensemble of papers describe the two realms within which de Lacy operated the wider political machinations which led to his exile the Cathar heresy the defensive architecture of France and Languedoc and the architectural influences transmitted throughout this period from one realm to another.
In exploiting the engaging story of Hugh de Lacy this volume creates a thematic whole which facilitates wide ranging comparison between events such as the Anglo-Norman take-over of Ireland and the Albigensian Crusade the subtleties of doctrine in Ireland and Languedoc and the transmission of progressive castle design linking the walls of Carcassonne and Carrickfergus.