Crusade, Settlement and Historical Writing in the Latin East and Latin West, C. 1100-C.1300 - (Crusading in Context) (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.

The period between the First Crusade and the collapse of the "crusader states" in the eastern Mediterranean was a crucial one for medieval historical writing. From the departure of the earliest crusading armies in 1096 to the Mamlūk conquest of the Latin states in the late thirteenth century, crusading activity, and the settlements it established and aimed to protect, generated a vast textual output, offering rich insights into the historiographical cultures of the Latin West and Latin East. However, modern scholarship on the crusades and the "crusader states" has tended to draw an artificial boundary between the two, even though medieval writers treated their histories as virtually indistinguishable.

This volume places these spheres into dialogue with each other, looking at how individual crusading campaigns and the Frankish settlements in the eastern Mediterranean were depicted and remembered in the central Middle Ages. Its essays cover a geographical range that incorporates England, France, Germany, southern Italy and the Holy Land, and address such topics as gender, emotion, the natural world, crusading as an institution, origin myths, textual reception, forms of storytelling and historical genre. Bringing to the foreground neglected sources, methodologies, events and regions of textual production, the collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.

Review Quotes

The consistently high quality of its chapters, as well as the stimulating variety of methodologies will recommend this collection to all specialists and advanced students in the history and literature of the Crusades and the Latin East.-- "AL-MASAQ JOURNAL OF THE MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN"

The three editors are once again to be congratulated for heralding the volume with such a rich and exemplary introduction, from which this reviewer has learned much.-- "FRANCIA-RECENSIO"