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"This is a book about how Near Eastern communities clustered around pious warfare as a set of literary conventions and how these dialogical conventions infiltrated the semantics of contemporary authors"--
This volume offers a literary and cultural history of the idea of crusading over the last millennium.
Specialists in other languages offer perspectives on the widespread use of French in a range of contexts, from German courtly narratives to biblical exegesis in Hebrew. French came into contact with many other languages in the Middle Ages: not just English, Italian and Latin, but also Arabic, Dutch, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish, Occitan, Sicilian, Spanish and Welsh. Its movement was impelled by trade, pilgrimage, crusade, migration, colonisation and conquest, and its contact zones included Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, among others. Writers in these contact zones often expressed themselves and their worlds in French; but other languages and cultural settings could also challenge,...
Medieval Westerners accepted killing for religion and praised the outcome of the First Crusade (1096-1099). At the same time, their attitude to violence was ambivalent. Theologians shunned the practical use of force, while the warrior aristocracy valued the capacity for physical destruction. In the absence of theological doctrine on the practicalities of holy warfare, the first crusaders draw their ideas about killing from diverse and sometimes conflicting traditions. This book answers questions about how religious violence was described, justified and remembered in the sources of the First Crusade. What was the relation between faith, convention, and action?
The Damietta Crusade, which is often referred to as the 'Fifth Crusade', was the first of the numbered crusades to be targeted against Egypt. Rather than directly targeting Jerusalem, its architects believed that by threatening the economic hub of Cairo the Ayyubid sultan would gladly give up Jerusalem in exchange. Here Laurence Marvin offers the first book-length treatment of the Damietta Crusade in almost 40 years. Written in accessible language and driven by a narrative and analysis firmly grounded in the primary sources in multiple languages, Marvin emphasizes what made this campaign unique, from its planning, choice of target, "brown-water" or amphibious nature, course, and result. He p...
In the Middle Ages, religious crusaders took up arms, prayed, bade farewell to their families, and marched off to fight in holy wars. These Christian soldiers also created accounts of their lives in lyric poetry, putting words to the experience of personal sacrifice and the pious struggle associated with holy war. The crusaders affirmed their commitment to fighting to claim a distant land while revealing their feelings as they left behind their loved ones, homes, and earthly duties. Their poems and related visual works offer us insight into the crusaders’ lives and values at the boundaries of earthly and spiritual duties, body and soul, holy devotion and courtly love. In The Subject of Cru...
The establishment of feudal principalities in the Levant in the wake of the First Crusade (1095-1099) saw the beginning of a centuries-long process of conquest and colonization of lands in the eastern Mediterranean by French-speaking Europeans. This book examines different aspects of the life and literary culture associated with this French-speaking society. It is the first study of the crusades to bring questions of language and culture so intimately into conversation. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the crusader settlements in the Levant, this book emphasizes hybridity and innovation, the movement of words and people across boundaries, seas and continents, and the negotiation of identity in a world tied partly to Europe but thoroughly embedded in the Mediterranean and Levantine context.
Marginality assumes a variety of forms in current discussions of the Middle Ages. Modern scholars have considered a seemingly innumerable list of people to have been marginalized in the European Middle Ages: the poor, criminals, unorthodox religious, the disabled, the mentally ill, women, so-called infidels, and the list goes on. If so many inhabitants of medieval Europe can be qualified as "marginal," it is important to interrogate where the margins lay and what it means that the majority of people occupied them. In addition, we scholars need to reexamine our use of a term that seems to have such broad applicability to ensure that we avoid imposing marginality on groups in the Middle Ages t...
In the 88 years between its establishment by the victorious armies of the First Crusade and its collapse following the disastrous defeat at Hattin, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was the site of vibrant artistic and architectural activity. As the crusaders rebuilt some of Christendom's most sacred churches, or embellished others with murals and mosaics, a unique and highly original art was created. Focusing on the sculptural, mosaic, and mural cycles adorning some of the most important shrines in the Kingdom (such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, The Basilica of the Annunciation, and the Church of the Nativity), this book offers a broad perspective of Crusader art and architecture. Among...