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Papers Presented by Keagan Brewer

Despite its importance as a primary source for the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, the ... more Despite its importance as a primary source for the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, the anonymous Latin treatise known as the 'Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum' (or 'Chronicon Terrae Sanctae') has never been published in a proper critical edition. Previous editions by Martène and Durand (1729), Stevenson (1875), and Prutz (1876) each have various merits, but their deficiencies leave them far short of the standards required to produce a text that is truly useful and reliable for modern scholarly research. In 2008, a team under the direction of Associate Professor John Pryor at the University of Sydney collected the four extant medieval manuscripts of the 'Libellus' and set out to create an entirely new edition, together with a facing-page translation, which was finally completed in 2018. This paper outlines the various challenges that arose in the course of the project, explains some of the crucial insights gained from our fresh examination of the 'Libellus' during the editing process, and argues for the value of returning to the manuscript evidence even when a text has already been printed in a relatively accessible and dependable collection like the Rolls Series.

Book Reviews by Keagan Brewer

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Literature & Aesthetics, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2019, pp. 210-211.

The legend of Prester John was one of the most enduring fictions entertained by Christians in the... more The legend of Prester John was one of the most enduring fictions entertained by Christians in the later Middle Ages. The idea that there was a Christian realm in the far east ruled over by a priest-king took root in the late twelfth century, and “there exists no piece of evidence prior to the eighteenth century that argued that argued that Prester John never existed in some form or another” (p. 2).

Papers by Keagan Brewer

Contents: Foreword Introduction: Believing in Prester John The beginnings of Prester John (12th c... more Contents: Foreword Introduction: Believing in Prester John The beginnings of Prester John (12th century) Prester John and the Fifth Crusade (early 13th century) Mongols and travel writers (mid-13th to 14th centuries) Prester John in Africa (15th to early 17th centuries) Legends and lies (late 16th and early 17th centuries) Unravelling Prester John (17th and 18th centuries) Appendices Select bibliography of secondary sources Index.

The Conquest of the Holy Land by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, 2019

Journal of Religious History

For centuries after his death in the late twelfth century, Simon of Tournai, a master of theology... more For centuries after his death in the late twelfth century, Simon of Tournai, a master of theology in the Parisian schools, had a reputation for being an unbeliever punished by God with a stroke. This article gathers the eight known medieval sources for his stroke and examines them from a mythogenetic perspective to demonstrate how different authors writing with different purposes, genres, and biases recast the image of Simon as an unbeliever for their own moral or polemical programs. I argue that since Simon's stroke was interpreted as divine action, presenting him as sinful was required to preserve divine goodness. The article also discusses the representation of Simon as irate as an element of didactic intent against unbelief, blasphemy, pride, anger, and luxuria. The article revises the date of Simon's stroke from c. 1201 to the 1180s or very early 1190s.

The Conquest of the Holy Land by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn

Parergon, 2020

In his Topographia Hibernica, Gerald of Wales describes many Irish wonders, including talking wer... more In his Topographia Hibernica, Gerald of Wales describes many Irish wonders, including talking werewolves, animal-human hybrids, and bestiality. Version III, written c. 1189-93 (after a recitation in Oxford in 1188/9), defends the truth of these particular wonders. Gerald's reactive revisions endorse the reality of the unnamed critic he attacks in the Expugnatio Hibernica (first written in 1189), whose objections seem to concern hexameral categories. The Oxford recitation of 1188/9 was probably where the critic raised these objections. A later critic, William de Montibus, bemoaned Gerald's consideration of bestiality as a legitimate object of ethnological discourse. Published in Parergon, 37/1 (2020), 27-53.

Medieval Encounters

This paper considers Christian responses to the problem of evil following Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn's conquest... more This paper considers Christian responses to the problem of evil following Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn's conquest of Jerusalem. Among Catholics, Audita Tremendi offered the orthodox response that God was punishing Christian sin. However, the logical conclusion of this view is that the Muslims were agents of God despite being 'evil' for having captured Jerusalem from Christians. Twelfth-century theologians believed that God could use devils in the service of good. In response to 1187, while many Christians portrayed the Muslims as evil, some expressed that they were divine agents. Meanwhile, others murmured that Muslim gods (including, to some, Muḥammad) were superior to Christian ones; that the Christian God was apathetic, violent, or wicked; that the crusade of 1189-92 was against God's will; and that crusaders were murderers. Thought-terminating clichés centring on the divine mysteries permitted the continuance of Christianity in the face of this profound theodical controversy. Accepted for publication in Medieval Encounters.

Medium Aevum

This short notice considers a faded note made with a stylus on the earliest manuscript of the Lib... more This short notice considers a faded note made with a stylus on the earliest manuscript of the Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinun, which its nineteenth-century editor Joseph Stevenson transcribed as '_____ Ricardus explicit'. While the authors were working on their critical edition and translation of the text (now published in Routledge's Crusade Texts in Translation series), we were unable to view the note under the naked eye or using ultraviolet light, and the British Library's internal notes on the manuscript did not show any evidence of trimming. Stevenson's footnote was therefore mysterious. A discovery made by Professor Elaine Treharne in early 2019 uncovered the note using digital photo-manipulation methods. This paper considers the relevance of the note in relation to the Libellus and scribal use of the stylus at Coggeshall in the early thirteenth century. Accepted for publication in Medium Aevum.

Despite its importance as a primary source for the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, the ... more Despite its importance as a primary source for the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, the anonymous Latin treatise known as the 'Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum' (or 'Chronicon Terrae Sanctae') has never been published in a proper critical edition. Previous editions by Martène and Durand (1729), Stevenson (1875), and Prutz (1876) each have various merits, but their deficiencies leave them far short of the standards required to produce a text that is truly useful and reliable for modern scholarly research. In 2008, a team under the direction of Associate Professor John Pryor at the University of Sydney collected the four extant medieval manuscripts of the 'Libellus' and set out to create an entirely new edition, together with a facing-page translation, which was finally completed in 2018. This paper outlines the various challenges that arose in the course of the project, explains some of the crucial insights gained from our fresh examination of the 'Libellus' during the editing process, and argues for the value of returning to the manuscript evidence even when a text has already been printed in a relatively accessible and dependable collection like the Rolls Series.

[

Literature & Aesthetics, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2019, pp. 210-211.

The legend of Prester John was one of the most enduring fictions entertained by Christians in the... more The legend of Prester John was one of the most enduring fictions entertained by Christians in the later Middle Ages. The idea that there was a Christian realm in the far east ruled over by a priest-king took root in the late twelfth century, and “there exists no piece of evidence prior to the eighteenth century that argued that argued that Prester John never existed in some form or another” (p. 2).

Contents: Foreword Introduction: Believing in Prester John The beginnings of Prester John (12th c... more Contents: Foreword Introduction: Believing in Prester John The beginnings of Prester John (12th century) Prester John and the Fifth Crusade (early 13th century) Mongols and travel writers (mid-13th to 14th centuries) Prester John in Africa (15th to early 17th centuries) Legends and lies (late 16th and early 17th centuries) Unravelling Prester John (17th and 18th centuries) Appendices Select bibliography of secondary sources Index.

The Conquest of the Holy Land by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, 2019

Journal of Religious History

For centuries after his death in the late twelfth century, Simon of Tournai, a master of theology... more For centuries after his death in the late twelfth century, Simon of Tournai, a master of theology in the Parisian schools, had a reputation for being an unbeliever punished by God with a stroke. This article gathers the eight known medieval sources for his stroke and examines them from a mythogenetic perspective to demonstrate how different authors writing with different purposes, genres, and biases recast the image of Simon as an unbeliever for their own moral or polemical programs. I argue that since Simon's stroke was interpreted as divine action, presenting him as sinful was required to preserve divine goodness. The article also discusses the representation of Simon as irate as an element of didactic intent against unbelief, blasphemy, pride, anger, and luxuria. The article revises the date of Simon's stroke from c. 1201 to the 1180s or very early 1190s.

The Conquest of the Holy Land by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn

Parergon, 2020

In his Topographia Hibernica, Gerald of Wales describes many Irish wonders, including talking wer... more In his Topographia Hibernica, Gerald of Wales describes many Irish wonders, including talking werewolves, animal-human hybrids, and bestiality. Version III, written c. 1189-93 (after a recitation in Oxford in 1188/9), defends the truth of these particular wonders. Gerald's reactive revisions endorse the reality of the unnamed critic he attacks in the Expugnatio Hibernica (first written in 1189), whose objections seem to concern hexameral categories. The Oxford recitation of 1188/9 was probably where the critic raised these objections. A later critic, William de Montibus, bemoaned Gerald's consideration of bestiality as a legitimate object of ethnological discourse. Published in Parergon, 37/1 (2020), 27-53.

Medieval Encounters

This paper considers Christian responses to the problem of evil following Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn's conquest... more This paper considers Christian responses to the problem of evil following Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn's conquest of Jerusalem. Among Catholics, Audita Tremendi offered the orthodox response that God was punishing Christian sin. However, the logical conclusion of this view is that the Muslims were agents of God despite being 'evil' for having captured Jerusalem from Christians. Twelfth-century theologians believed that God could use devils in the service of good. In response to 1187, while many Christians portrayed the Muslims as evil, some expressed that they were divine agents. Meanwhile, others murmured that Muslim gods (including, to some, Muḥammad) were superior to Christian ones; that the Christian God was apathetic, violent, or wicked; that the crusade of 1189-92 was against God's will; and that crusaders were murderers. Thought-terminating clichés centring on the divine mysteries permitted the continuance of Christianity in the face of this profound theodical controversy. Accepted for publication in Medieval Encounters.

Medium Aevum

This short notice considers a faded note made with a stylus on the earliest manuscript of the Lib... more This short notice considers a faded note made with a stylus on the earliest manuscript of the Libellus de expugnatione terrae sanctae per Saladinun, which its nineteenth-century editor Joseph Stevenson transcribed as '_____ Ricardus explicit'. While the authors were working on their critical edition and translation of the text (now published in Routledge's Crusade Texts in Translation series), we were unable to view the note under the naked eye or using ultraviolet light, and the British Library's internal notes on the manuscript did not show any evidence of trimming. Stevenson's footnote was therefore mysterious. A discovery made by Professor Elaine Treharne in early 2019 uncovered the note using digital photo-manipulation methods. This paper considers the relevance of the note in relation to the Libellus and scribal use of the stylus at Coggeshall in the early thirteenth century. Accepted for publication in Medium Aevum.

"This is an intriguing study of marvels, miracles and wonder stories and the ways medieval people... more "This is an intriguing study of marvels, miracles and wonder stories and the ways medieval people responded to them. Brewer integrates studies in neuroscience, modern social psychology and reception theory to investigate how readers and listeners reacted to stories of wonder and to show how their demands for proof contributed to the development of medieval skepticism." Kathleen Kamerick, University of Iowa, USA Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages explores the response by medieval society to tales of marvels and the supernatural, which ranged from rm belief to outright rejection, and asks why the believers believed and why the skeptical disbelieved. Despite living in a world whose structures more often than not supported belief, there were still a great many who disbelieved, most notably scholastic philosophers who began a polemical program against belief in marvels. Keagan Brewer re-evaluates the Middle Ages' reputation as an era of credulity by considering the evidence for incidences of marvels, miracles and the supernatural and demonstrating the reasons people did and did not believe in such things. Using an array of contemporary sources, he shows that medieval responders sought evidence in the commonality of a report, similarity of one event to another, theological explanations and from people with status, to show that those who believed in marvels and miracles did so only because the wonders had passed evidentiary testing. In particular, he examines both emotional and rational reactions to wondrous phenomena and why some were readily accepted and others rejected. This book is an important contribution to the history of emotions and belief in the Middle Ages. Keagan Brewer is based at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Sydney. His publications include Prester John: The Legend and Its Sources (Aldershot, 2015).

Routledge's Crusade Texts in Translation Series, 2019

Routledge, Crusade Texts in Translation Series, 2015