William J. Purkis . Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia c. 1095‐c. 1187 . Rochester, N.Y. : Boydell Press . 2008 . Pp. xi, 215. $90.00.

Abstract

This book is a valuable contribution to crusades studies. Following Giles Constable and Jean Leclercq, William J. Purkis sees the crusades as an integral part of twelfth-century religious reform. In that framework, he emphasizes the importance of pilgrimage and the imitation of Christ and the apostolic life to the origins and early development of crusading. The first two chapters argue that Pope Urban II touched on the deepest devotional needs of his audience in his crusading appeal. The preachers and first historians of the crusade understood the crusaders as imitators of Christ and practitioners of the apostolic life, which also seems to have been the crusaders' self-perception. Imitatio Christi and vita apostolica were “two foundations of crusading spirituality” (p. 56). Chapter three looks at the first fifty years of crusaders' rule in the East. In that period, the connection between crusading to the East and ideals of apostolic life faded away, while ideas of Christo-mimesis continued to be central to crusading spirituality. Chapter four examines the Cistercian influence on crusading spirituality in the second and third quarters of the twelfth century. As a result of Cistercian preaching, the ideal of imitatio Christi was divorced from crusaders and reserved for those who committed their whole lives to following Christ, such as the Templars. Crusaders, in turn, were defined by the “duty to their bloodline” (p. 118). Their duty was to follow the crusading exemplum of their fathers. The last two chapters turn to Iberia. As a tribute to the potency of the imitatio Christi ideal, which itself was linked to the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, crusading was introduced to Iberia as an alternative route to Jerusalem. But this idea of iter per Hispaniam was soon supplanted by the invention of local crusading foundational legends and centers for penitential pilgrimage, such as the cult of St. James, the patron of the fight against the Muslims of Spain, at Compostela.