La croix prêchée et la croix du croisé. Le moment de la prise de croix dans les manuscrits enluminés du XIIIe au XVe siècle

Abstract

« Tuit cil qui a ce pelerinage se lioient, mettoient le signe de la croix sur la destre espaule... » (French tranlsation of Guillaume de Tyr, book I, chapter 16: All who join this pilgrimage should put the sign of the cross on their right shoulder). The participants of the crusade are crucesignati (marked with the sign of the cross), and the cross is the emblem of the expedition, its distinctive sign. The value and meaning of that mark of alliance was as evident to the chroniclers and canonists of the Middle Ages as it is to modern historians who study the textual witnesses. Iconographical sources, however, have been somewhat neglected, yet they provide useful information on the distribution of roles between the spiritual and temporal power at the moments of preaching and engagement, and offer varied representations of the mark of the expedition. This study, based on illuminated manuscripts from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, mainly of French origin, treats three themes: representations of the moment of preaching and the crucesignatio; the roles of the two exemplary figures in those episodes: Pierre l'Ermite and Louis IX; a typological study of the different types of cross found in the miniatures.