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Cover image of Remembering the Crusades
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Remembering the Crusades

Myth, Image, and Identity

edited by Nicholas Paul and Suzanne Yeager

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Few events in European history generated more historical, artistic, and literary responses than the conquest of Jerusalem by the armies of the First Crusade in 1099. This epic military and religious expedition, and the many that followed it, became part of the collective memory of communities in Europe, Byzantium, North Africa, and the Near East. Remembering the Crusades examines the ways in which those memories were negotiated, transmitted, and transformed from the Middle Ages through the modern period.

Bringing together leading scholars in art history, literature, and medieval European and...

Few events in European history generated more historical, artistic, and literary responses than the conquest of Jerusalem by the armies of the First Crusade in 1099. This epic military and religious expedition, and the many that followed it, became part of the collective memory of communities in Europe, Byzantium, North Africa, and the Near East. Remembering the Crusades examines the ways in which those memories were negotiated, transmitted, and transformed from the Middle Ages through the modern period.

Bringing together leading scholars in art history, literature, and medieval European and Near Eastern history, this volume addresses a number of important questions. How did medieval communities respond to the intellectual, cultural, and existential challenges posed by the unique fusion of piety and violence of the First Crusade? How did the crusades alter the form and meaning of monuments and landscapes throughout Europe and the Near East? What role did the crusades play in shaping the collective identity of cities, institutions, and religious sects?

In exploring these and other questions, the contributors analyze how the events of the First Crusade resonated in a wide range of cultural artifacts, including literary texts, art and architecture, and liturgical ceremonies. They discuss how Christians, Jews, and Muslims recalled and interpreted the events of the crusades and what far-reaching implications that remembering had on their communities throughout the centuries.

Remembering the Crusades is the first collection of essays to investigate the commemoration of the crusades in eastern and western cultures. Its unprecedented multidisciplinary and cross-cultural approach points the way to a complete reevaluation of the place of the crusades in medieval and modern societies.

Reviews

Reviews

This is a fascinating book that ever historian and history buff should read and use as a reference, but it must be mandatory reading for all students of history in all universities.

Editors and contributors alike deserve praise for a timely and closely knit collection that shows what can be done in this new field of query.

A serious and substantial contribution to the most recent scholarship on the crusades.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
296
ISBN
9781421404257
Illustration Description
20 b&w illus.
Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Crusading and the Work of Memory, Past and Present
Part I: Remembrance and Response
Chapter 1. Memory, Wonder, and Desire in the Travels of Ibn Jubayr

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Crusading and the Work of Memory, Past and Present
Part I: Remembrance and Response
Chapter 1. Memory, Wonder, and Desire in the Travels of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battuta
Chapter 2. Constructing Memories of Martyrdom: Contrasting Portrayals of Martyrdom in the Hebrew Narratives of the First and Second Crusade
Chapter 3. Lambert of Saint-Omer and the Apocalyptic First Crusade
Part II: Sites and Structures: Cities, Buildings, and Bodies
Chapter 4. Remembering the Crusades in the Fabric of Buildings: Preliminary Thoughts about Alternating Voussoirs
Chapter 5. Commemorating the Fall of Jerusalem: Remembering the First Crusade in Text, Liturgy, and Image
Chapter 6. Erasing the Body: History and Memory in Medieval Siege Poetry
Chapter 7. The Servile Mother: Jerusalem as Woman in the Era of the Crusades
Part III: Institutional Memory and Community Identity
Chapter 8. Saladin in Sunni and Shi'a Memories
Chapter 9. Paul the Martyr and Venetian Memories of the Fourth Crusade
Chapter 10. Aspects of Hospitaller and Templar Memory
Chapter 11. Visual Self-Fashioning and the Seals of the Knights Hospitaller in England
List of Contributors
Index

Author Bios