Tales of the Crusaders – Remembering the Crusades in Britain (original) (raw)

Memory and Interpretation: New Approaches to the Study of the Crusades

This article describes the connection between studies of memory and the history of the crusades. The authors argue that integrating memory into crusades scholarship offers new ways of exploring the aftermath of war, the construction of cultural memory, the role of women and families in this process, and the crusading movement itself. The article draws on and extends recent trends in crusade scholarship that understand the crusades as a broad religious movement that called upon and developed within a cultural framework that was wider than previously acknowledged. It examines the historical and theoretical development of memory studies and then outlines the recent historiography of crusading studies. The article then introduces a series of essays, which together examine the creation, communication and dissemination of crusade memory.

Crusade Narratives: The Cause and Effect of Remembrance

2018

The 53rd Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI, May 2018). There are many surviving documents which recount the persecution of the medieval Jews of western Christendom. Some of the most remarkable of these documents are the Hebrew and Latin crusade narratives which describe the plight of the Jews in the midst of the Rhineland massacres. Although the Latin and Hebrew texts paint a similar time-bound picture, the Hebrew texts serve as a timeless justification of the non-normative actions performed by the Jewry in the Rhineland. The purpose of this paper is to explain how the Hebrew Crusade narratives theologically justified the ritual suicides of the Rhineland Jewry, sufficiently recorded the history of the actual events once coupled with the Latin narratives, gave substance to blood libel accusations, and created a narrative of remembrance.

The Appropriation and Weaponisation of the Crusades in the Modern Era (AAM version)

International Journal of Military History and Historiography. Special Issue: “The Appropriation and Weaponisation of the Crusades in the Modern Era”, guest editor, Jason T. Roche, Volume 41(2): 187-207, 2021

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.

Conference Report: 'Contextualising the Fifth Crusade'

The Fifth Crusade (c. 1217-1221) was undoubtedly an important episode in history, occurring during what was probably the most intensive period of crusading in both Europe and the Holy Land. But this event was much more than a military campaign and has been rather neglected in historiography. To contribute to recent directions in crusades studies, the colloquium organised at Canterbury brought together a group of 22 speakers from 11 countries to discuss a wide range of aspects related to the crusading movement around the time of the Fifth Crusade.

Holy Wars, Empires, and the Portability of the Past: The Modern Uses of Medieval Crusades

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2006

On 12 June 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the islands of Malta. The Knights Hospitaller surrendered with little fight, and the independently recognized polity of the Knights of St. John, the last bastion of the medieval chivalric orders, fell. Founded in the Middle Ages as a military order created both to carry the sword against Islam and provide shelter and medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Knights had by the end of the eighteenth century become an anachronism. The Ottoman Empire, the last of the great Muslim powers of the Mediterranean, had long been considered little more than a pawn in larger political struggles on the Continent. The practical application of crusading as church policy had long fallen out of favor. As a military force, the Order was no longer of any consequence. The Grand Council that directed the Order consisted for the most part of Maltese or Italian nobles of little formal training in the strategy and tactics of "modern" warfare. Historians of the late eighteenth century had come to the conclusion that the crusades of the Middle Ages were little more than the fanatical hate mongering of an unenlightened time. As Edward Gibbon wrote: "The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause.. .. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends.. .. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion.. .. The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country.. .." 1 However, we should not be too hasty in agreeing with Gibbon's assessment of crusading as merely an example of medieval "savage fanaticism." Quite apart from the purely romantic images of the knights in shining armor and damsels in distress which, folly or not, still remain with us today, many who retained power in Europe in the nineteenth century were not devotees of Hobbes or Gibbon, and did not take their historiographic cues from the 2 See Patrick Hutton's review article, "Recent Scholarship on Memory and History," History Teacher 33, 4 (2000), 533-48. 3 Michaud's work was republished throughout the nineteenth century.