Remembering The Crusades In Medieval Texts And Songs

Exploring Latin texts, as well as Old French, Castilian and Occitan songs and lyrics, Remembering the Crusades in Medieval Texts and Songs takes inspiration from the new ways scholars are looking to trace the dissemination and influence of the memories and narratives surrounding the crusading past in medieval Europe. It contributes to these new directions in crusade studies by offering a more nuanced understanding of the diverse ways in which medieval authors presented events, people and places central to the crusading movement. This volume investigates how the transmission of stories related to suffering, heroism, the miraculous and ideals of masculinity helped to shape ideas of crusading presented in narratives produced in both the Latin East and the West, as well as the importance of Jerusalem in the lyric cultures of southern France, and how the narrative arc of the First Crusade developed from the earliest written and oral responses to the venture.

This book contributes to new directions in crusade studies by offering a more nuanced understanding of the diverse ways in which medieval authors and performers presented events, people, and places central to the crusading movement.

Crusades covers the seven hundred years from the First Crusade (1095-1102) to the fall of Malta (1798) and draws together scholars working on theatres of war, their home fronts and settlements from the Baltic to Africa and from Spain to the Near East and on theology, law, literature, art, numismatics and economic, social, political and military history. Routledge publishes this journal for The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. Particular attention is given to the publication of historical sources - narrative, homiletic and documentary - but studies and interpretative essays are welcomed too. Crusades also incorporates the Society's Bulletin. The editors are Professor Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; Professor Jonathan Phillips, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK; Iris Shagrir, The Open University of Israel; and Nikolaos G. Chrissis, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece.

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.

Remembering the Crusades and Crusading examines the diverse contexts in which crusading was memorialised and commemorated in the medieval world and beyond. The collection not only shows how the crusades were commemorated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but also considers the longer-term remembrance of the crusades into the modern era. This collection is divided into three sections, the first of which deals with the textual, material and visual sources used to remember. Each contributor introduces a particular body of source material and presents case studies using those sources in their own research. The second section contains four chapters examining specific communities active in commemorating the crusades, including religious communities, family groups and royal courts. Finally, the third section examines the cultural memory of crusading in the Byzantine, Iberian and Baltic regions beyond the early years, as well as the trajectory of crusading memory in the Muslim Middle East. This book draws together and extends the current debates in the history of the crusades and the history of memory and in so doing offers a fresh synthesis of material in both fields. It will be essential reading for students of the crusades and memory.

Alfonso X (1221-84) ruled over the Crown of Castile from 1252 until his death. Known as "the Wise," he oversaw the production of a wealth of literature in his scriptorium. One of the most impressive of these literary outputs is the collection of songs known as the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which by most counts comprises 429 songs preserved in four manuscripts. The miracle songs (or cantigas de miragre) form the focus of this book. While the Cantigas have been the subject of much scholarly attention, only a handful of studies have looked at the repertory through an interdisciplinary lens. Fewer still have probed how the Cantigas use the power of song as a communicative medium, one that functions as a social tool within the erudite environment of the Alfonsine court. This book offers a new perspective to the song collection, probing how the Cantigas use their music and text, together with rhetorical devices, to communicate with their desired audience. Author Henry T. Drummond builds upon previous methodologies, adopting a novel and holistic assessment of the songs' melodies, poetic features, and narrative logic to assess a wide selection of songs. He presents a nuanced understanding of a song form that effectively conveys its narratives to its listeners via a diverse combination of tools, embracing medieval rhetoric, rhyme-based play, and song's inherent ludic potential. Such devices, Drummond argues, allow for the Cantigas to loom large as propaganda pieces, designed to dignify Alfonso X through an elaborately devised courtly ritual.

'Powerful' The Economist 'Fascinating, panoramic . . . Roach brings an expert eye and page-turning energy' Helen Castor, bestselling author of She Wolves 'Narrated with pace, clarity, authority and style, Roach's book is a bracing tour of the world that the Normans made their own' Thomas Williams, bestselling author of Viking Britain 'A fresh retelling . . . written with enthusiasm and brio' Marc Morris, bestselling author of The Anglo-Saxons How did descendants of Viking marauders come to dominate Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East? It is a tale of ambitious adventures and fierce freebooters, of fortunes made and fortunes lost. The Normans made their influence felt across all of western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land. In Empires of the Normans we discover how they combined military might and political savvy with deeply held religious beliefs and a profound sense of their own destiny. For a century and a half, they remade Europe in their own image, and yet their heritage was quickly forgotten - until now.

Birds have always been a popular and accessible subject, but most books about medieval birds are an overview of their symbolism generally: owl for ill-omen, the pelican as a Eucharistic image and the like. The unique selling point of this book is to focus on one bird and explore it in detail from medieval reality to artistic concept. This book also traces how and why the medieval perception of the swan shifted from hypocritical to courtly within the medieval period. With special attention to ‘The Knight of the Swan’, the book traces the rise and popularity of the medieval swan through literature, history, courtly practices, and art. The book uses thoroughly readable language to appeal to a wide audience and explains some of the reasons why the swan holds such resonance today by covering views of the swan from classic to early modern times.