"This volume brings together contributions from fifteen historians and art historians working on the history of the crusades, focusing on Iberia and the Baltic region. The subjects treated include the historiography of the Iberian and Baltic crusades; the transfer of crusading ideas from the Holy Land to Iberia and the Baltic region and the use of such ideas in local rhetoric and propaganda; the papal attitudes towards the Iberian and Baltic campaigns; the papal attitudes towards Muslims living in Christian Spain; the interaction between conquered and conquerors as reflected in art and architecture; and the exchange of information about the crusades in Iberia and the wider Baltic Region. The collection thus throws further light not only onto events in the Iberian Peninsula and the Baltic region but also onto the development of the crusade movement in general. It constitutes a valuable resource for both undergraduates and postgraduates studying the crusade movement in the Middle Ages."--

A collection of essays focusing on the history and politics of the Latin East.

The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, written by a missionary priest in the early thirteenth century to record the history of the crusades to Livonia and Estonia around 1186-1227, offers one of the most vivid examples of the early thirteenth century crusading ideology in practice. Step by step, it has become one of the most widely read and acknowledged frontier crusading and missionary chronicles. Henry's chronicle offers many opportunities to test and broaden the new approaches and key concepts brought along by recent developments in medieval studies, including the new pluralist definition of crusading and the relationship between the peripheries and core areas of Europe. While recent years have produced a significant amount of new research into Henry of Livonia, much of it has been limited to particular historical traditions and languages. A key objective of this book, therefore, is to synthesise the current state of research for the international scholarly audience. The volume provides a multi-sided and multi-disciplinary companion to the chronicle, and is divided into three parts. The first part, 'Representations,' brings into focus the imaginary sphere of the chronicle - the various images brought into existence by the amalgamation of crusading and missionary ideology and the frontier experience. This is followed by studies on 'Practices,' which examines the chronicle's reflections of the diplomatic, religious, and military practices of the christianisation and colonisation processes in medieval Livonia. The volume concludes with a section on the 'Appropriations,' which maps the reception history of the chronicle: the dynamics of the medieval, early modern and modern national uses and abuses of the text.

Throughout the history of the Crusades, liturgical prayer, masses, and alms were all marshaled in the fight against Muslim armies. In Invisible Weapons, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin focuses on the ways in which Latin Christians communicated their ideas and aspirations for crusade to God through liturgy, how public worship was deployed, and how prayers and masses absorbed the ideals and priorities of crusading. Placing religious texts and practices within the larger narrative of crusading, Gaposchkin offers a new understanding of a crucial facet in the culture of holy war.

Unlike most historical works on criticism of crusading, which focus on the 13th century, this detailed study traces the subject from the time of the First Crusade to the Second Council of Lyons. Drawing on a wide range of Latin and vernacular sources, Siberry argues that most critics were actually more concerned with abuses of crusading ideals and practices than with their justification, and even made suggestions for improvement. Each chapter covers a different type of criticism--from bitter criticism of those who were capable of fighting but failed to fulfill their vows to complaints about the behavior of the crusading armies--and assesses its significance. Siberry refutes many scholarly misconceptions about the nature and extent of the critics' protests, and concludes that there was still much popular enthusiasm for crusading in 1274.

This volume has been created by scholars from a range of disciplines who wish to show their appreciation for Professor John France and to celebrate his career and achievements. For many decades, Professor France’s work has been instrumental in many of the advances made in the fields of crusader studies and medieval warfare. He has published widely on these topics including major publications such as: Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (1994) and Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades (1999). This present volume mirrors his interests, offering studies upon both areas. The fifteen essays cover a wide variety of topics, spanning chronologically from the Carolingian period through to the early fourteenth century. Some offer new insights upon long-contested issues, such as the question of whether a new form of cavalry was created by Charles Martel and his successors or the implications of the Mongol defeat at Ayn Jalut. Others use innovative methodologies to unlock the potential of various types of source material including: manuscript illuminations depicting warfare, Templar graffiti, German crusading songs, and crusading charters. Several of the articles open up new areas of debate connected to the history of crusading. Malcolm Barber discusses why Christendom did not react decisively to the fall of Acre in 1291. Bernard Hamilton explores how the rising Frankish presence in the Eastern Mediterranean during the central medieval period reshaped Christendom’s knowledge and understanding of the North African cultures they encountered. In this way, this work seeks both to advance debate in core areas whilst opening new vistas for future research.

The Wendish Crusade of 1147, one of the Northern Crusades and a part of the Second Crusade, took place at a critical phase in the evolution of crusading rhetoric. The initiators and apologists of the campaign employed rhetorical devices to justify the occupation of a region and conversion of a population under the auspices of a crusade. A detailed examination of the primary sources shows that the justification of a crusade against apostates was not only a German endeavour, or the pope’s will, but a political reality of the twelfth century. Therefore, the attitude of the papacy is shown to be reactive rather than proactive.

Crusading as a subject has expanded in recent years to include new fields of enquiry. This book examines how crusading historiography includes new areas and new definitions, focusing on two fundamental issues in current writing: why people went on crusades and what forms the western settlement in the Near East took. Crusading and the Crusader States explains how the idea of holy wars came into being and why they took the form that they did - a clash between western and Islamic societies that dominated the Middle Ages.

Crusading in the twelfth century was less a series of discrete events than a manifestation of an endemic phenomenon that touched almost every aspect of life at that time. The defense of Christendom and the recovery of the Holy Land were widely-shared objectives. Thousands of men, and not a few women, participated in the crusades, including not only those who took the cross but many others who shared the costs and losses, as well as the triumphs of the crusaders. This volume contains not a narrative account of the crusades in the twelfth century, but a group of studies illustrating many aspects of crusading that are often passed over in narrative histories, including the courses and historiography of the crusades, their background, ideology, and finances, and how they were seen in Europe. Included are revised and updated versions of Giles Constable's classic essays on medieval crusading, along with two major new studies on the cross of the crusaders and the Fourth Crusade, and two excursuses on the terminology of crusading and the numbering of the crusades. They provide an opportunity to meet some individual crusaders, such as Odo Arpinus, whose remarkable career carried him from France to the east and back again, and whose legendary exploits in the Holy Land were recorded in the Old French crusade cycle. Other studies take the reader to the boundaries of Christendom in Spain and Portugal and in eastern Germany, where the campaigns against the Wends formed part of the wider crusading movement. Together they show the range and depth of crusading at that time and its influence on the broader history of the period.

Engaging the Crusades is a series of volumes which offer windows into a newly emerging field of historical study: the memory and legacy of the crusades. Together these volumes examine the reasons behind the enduring resonance of the crusades and present the memory of crusading in the modern period as a productive, exciting, and much needed area of investigation. This new volume explores the ways in which significant crusading figures have been employed as heroes and villains, and by whom. Each chapter analyses a case study relating to a key historical figure including the First Crusader Tancred; ‘villains’ Reynald of Châtillon and Conrad of Montferrat; the oft-overlooked Queen Melisende of Jerusalem; the entangled memories of Richard ‘the Lionheart’ and Saladin; and the appropriation of St Louis IX by the British. Through fresh approaches, such as a new translation of the inscriptions on the wreath laid on Saladin’s tomb by Kaiser Wilhelm II, this book represents a significant cutting-edge intervention in thinking about memory, crusader medievalism, and the processes of making heroes and villains. The Making of Crusading Heroes and Villains is the perfect tool for scholars and students of the crusades, and for historians concerned with the development of reputations and memory.