Constantinople Pillaged, Venice Risen and Gerusalemme Liberata – A view from Italy, in Controversial Histories – Current Views on the Crusades, edd. F. Hinz - J. Meyer-Hamme, London 2020, pp. 87-88 (original) (raw)

The Crusades are most often presented as religiously motivated wars between the Christian medieval powers, secular and ecclesiastical, and the Islamic world. The proximate cause of the First Crusade (1096-1099) included the defeat of the Byzantine Emperor Romanes IV Diogenes by the armies of the Seljuq Sultan Alp-Arslan at the Battle of Manzikert (26 August 1071), followed by the Seljuq conquest of Anatolia. Pope Urban II feared Constantinople might be conquered and preached the Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095. This tale is well-known; the Western occupation of the Middle East came to an end in 1291 when the final expulsion of Latin Christians from Syria occurred. However, there were Crusades in the Baltic States and north-eastern Europe, in which the military order the Teutonic Knights was prominent (compared to the Templars in the Holy Land). These began in 1193 when Pope Celestine III preached a Crusade against the Pagan Balts. The Teutonic Knights were active in Eastern Europe until the fifteenth century, building a huge Christian territory in Prussia and the Baltic region. This lecture looks at the critical lenses used to interpret the particular type of Holy War denoted by the term “Crusade” from the medieval era to the present.

The Crusader World is a multidisciplinary survey of the current state of research in the field of crusader studies, an area of study which has become increasingly popular in recent years. In this volume Adrian Boas draws together an impressive range of academics, including work from renowned scholars as well as a number of thought-provoking pieces from emerging researchers, in order to provide broad coverage of the major aspects of the period. This authoritative work will play an important role in the future direction of crusading studies. This volume enriches present knowledge of the crusades, addressing such wide-ranging subjects as: intelligence and espionage, gender issues, religious celebrations in crusader Jerusalem, political struggles in crusader Antioch, the archaeological study of battle sites and fortifications, diseases suffered by the crusaders, crusading in northern Europe and Spain and the impact of crusader art. The relationship between crusaders and Muslims, two distinct and in many way opposing cultures, is also examined in depth, including a discussion of how the Franks perceived their enemies. Arranged into eight thematic sections, The Crusader World considers many central issues as well as a large number of less familiar topics of the crusades, crusader society, history and culture. With over 100 photographs, line drawings and maps, this impressive collection of essays is a key resource for students and scholars alike.

abstract: By examining the first Venetian chronicle written after the Fourth Crusade, the Historia ducum Venetorum (1102–1229), this article shows how the Venetian ruling elites wanted to present their recent past. In particular, it proves that the author of that work and probably many of his fellow countrymen wished to point out that the Venetians gave fundamental support toward the defense and strengthening of the Kingdom of Jerusalem without expecting any material reward. Moreover, the Venetians had always been good friends and allies of the Byzantines, and the deterioration of this relationship and the conquest of Constantinople had to be attributed to the irresponsible behavior and ingratitude of the Byzantine emperors. By distorting or omitting a few events, they also wanted to demonstrate that Venice always enjoyed a perfect internal harmony and, therefore, represented an ideal society.

The introductory article proposes the hypothesis, which informed the decision making and editorial work in the Special Issue, that appropriations and weaponisations of the crusades in the modern era rely on culturally embedded master narratives of the past that are often thought to encompass public or cultural memories. Crucially, medievalism, communicated through metonyms, metaphors, symbols and motifs frequently acts as a placeholder instead of the master narratives themselves. The article addresses differences between medievalists' and modernists' conceptions of crusades, especially highlighting how the very meaning of words - such as crusade - differ in the respective fields. But the matter at hand goes beyond semantics, for the notion that the act of crusading is a live and potent issue is hard to ignore. There exists a complex and multifaceted crusading present. That people can appeal to master narratives of the crusades via mutable medievalism, which embodies zero-sum, Manichaean-type "clash of civilisations" scenarios, helps explain the continued appeal of the crusades to those who seek to weaponise them. It is hoped that the contributions to the special issue, introduced towards the end of the article, further a better understanding of the ways this has happened in the modern era.

This introductory article serves a number of purposes. It offers an abridged narrative of the scope of the Second Crusade and introduces the major debates associated with the venture. All the contributions to the present volume are introduced within this framework and, when applicable, their place in the current historiography is highlighted. While serving as a concise introduction to the multifaceted nature of the crusade and, for the first time, drawing attention to the main debates associated with it within a single article, the historiographical discussion of this remarkable mid-twelfth-century endeavour has necessarily proved to be a testing ground for a familiar although still unresolved debate: what do scholars mean when the employ the terms ‘crusading’, ‘crusade’ and ‘crusader’?

For an integral understanding of the Crusades, this study evaluates the Crusades both “from within” and “from without,” by examining the views of two contemporaries of the Crusades: Pope Urban II, the so-called founding father of crusading, and ʿAlī ibn Ṭāhir al-Sulamī, a Muslim jurist from Damascus. The crusading pope and the Muslim faqīh guide us to a proper comprehension of the Crusades by refusing to judge the entire movement on the basis of the most recent expression of crusading activity, and they allow us to view the Crusades from Rome and Damascus during the formative period of their development.