Crusading Movement Research Articles

Chrzest Polski jako wyzwanie dla współczesnej edukacji

After the adoption of Christianity by the Polish Prince Mieszko I, the land of Slavs became part of the then civilized world and emphasized its presence in the family of Christian countries, and while it maintained many of its traditions, it started to adopt the achievements of the Christian civilization. It seems obvious that owing to this bold decision made by the prince of Polans, today the state and the nation speaking the Polish language do exist. However, if Mieszko had not adopted Christianity, maybe in the 11 th century his principality would still have developed and would have been strong, like the pagan Veleti Union living in the western coast of the Baltic Sea. On the other hand, in the 12 th century undoubtedly Mieszko’s land would have been attacked by the neighboring states that, on the wave of the crusade movement, under the banner of spreading Christianity, would have tried to conquer the territories. The inhabitants of those lands would have been Christians, probably there would have been no Poland, since the Polish lands would have become part of the neighboring countries, just like the territories belonging to the Veleti Union or ones occupied by the Old Prussians had become part of Germany. The ancestors of today’s Poles, although Christians, probably would have spoken German, Czech, or Ruthenian. This fact has to be reminded in the education of the young generation of Poles and cited in debates with the circles contesting the right of Christian ideas to exist in the state educational system.

Das Netzwerk der Montaigus zwischen Okzident und Orient

During the .rst half of the thirteenth century, the noble family of Montaigu from Auvergne featured a set of brothers who became masters of the Order of the Hospital (Garin) and that of the Temple (Peter), as well as members of the episcopate on Crusader Cyprus (Bishop Fulk of Limassol and Archbishop Eustorg of Nicosia). Some of them siblings were involved in the Fi.h Crusade, the Crusade of the Barons, and the earlier Crusade of King Louis IX of France. >eir niece and nephew respectively found themselves spouses from among the aristocracy of the Latin East (namely Alice, who married John of Caesarea, and Gerald who married Eschiva of Montbeliard), and other members of the family sta.ed high-ranking positions of the clergy in Auvergne (for example another nephew, Bishop Bernard of Le Puy). >is article combines a study of the synchronous Montaigu-family network with that of the diachronic context that saw France’s rise of the Capetians and the crusader states’ steady decline. Utilizing charter evidence from both East and West, chronicles, the genealogies of the crusader aristocracy (namely the so-called “Lignages d’Outemer”), as well as a translation account pertaining to the Holy Passion relic of the “Crown of >orns”, this article shows that the Montaigu-family network was extensive, at times dense enough to control a.airs in the Latin East, and yet overall rather subtle. It demonstrates, furthermore, that those members of the network who were members of the clergy generally subordinated their family’s interests to those of the Latin Church, and that they le. a legacy of ecclesiastical art that can still be seen in Auvergne and Cyprus today, which is evidence of the close links between this family-network from Auvergne and the crusading movement.

Historiography in the Twenty-First Century

Books Reviewed: Thomas F. Madden, The Concise History of the Crusades,3d ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); Paul M. Cobb, The Racefor Paradise (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014); Jonathan Harris,Byzantium and the Crusades, 2d ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).
 During the last six decades, historians have adopted various approaches tostudying the Crusades. Unfortunately, few contemporary Muslim scholarshave dealt with this topic at all. In the aftermath of 9/11, however, this seriesof European military invasions of the Middle East began to reappear in themedia as analysts, historians, and academics posited that they were a precursorof the region’s present sociopolitical disorder as daunting as the current East-West discourse and relations between the Christian and Muslim worlds.1 Someworks deconstruct the perception that there is no connection between them,whereas others view the Crusades from the Islamic perspective in an attemptto balance the general triumphalist western narrative.2This essay focuses on three recent works that, although dealing with differentstandpoints, are explicitly interwoven. Thomas F. Madden’s The ConciseHistory of the Crusades “is an attempt to illuminate the complex relationshipof the past to the present” and narrates the Crusades in a “concise, understandable,and engaging manner” (pp. vii, viii) based on modern scholarship; PaulM. Cobb’s The Race for Paradise shows how medieval Muslims perceivedthe Crusades and is based on his research primarily from original Islamicsources (p. 6); and Jonathan Harris’ Byzantium and the Crusades concentrateson the relations between Byzantium and the Latin West during the Crusades.Madden’s book comprises ten chapters. Chapter 1, “The Call,” discussesthe crusading movement’s background as primarily an act of piety despite anunderlying current of selfish/secular desires, a fact that western scholars oftenoverlook. He also criticizes historians who believe that many Crusaders weremotivated by medieval Europe’s policy of “castoffs,” wherein only the firstson could inherit his father’s estate, by stating that the majority of crusading ...

Holy War, Crusade and "Reconquista" in recent anglo-american historiography about the Iberian Peninsula

In contemporary Western societies, who are going through a neo-romantic stage, the Crusades have led to an immense literature and a remarkable popularity. In the scientific field, this phenomenon has encouraged the debate on the ideological and cultural issues surrounding Crusade. Since that in the Iberian Peninsula had developed fights between Muslims and Christians before 1096, it is inevitable that historians have wondered about the influence of the reconquest in the origins of the crusading movement. In this paper, we critized the widespread view among Anglo-Saxon historians, according to which secular piety and spirituality were instrumental in the development of the First Crusade, and struggles carried out in the Iberian Peninsula did not influence in the extraordinary adhesion of the European nobles to this issue. In addition, other concepts that may help to explain the intensity of the response, such as “aristocratic networks,” and at the same time help to understand the weight of the Hispanic experience in this movement.

The German Crusade of 1197–1198

This article reconsiders the significance of the German Crusade of 1197–98, often dismissed as a very minor episode in the history of the crusading movement. It examines the results of the expedition and some of the problems which dogged it on its arrival in the East, and which eventually led to its abandonment, especially the relations of the crusaders with the Franks of Outremer. However, this study devotes most attention to the process of calling the crusade, and to its composition and recruitment, placing this within the context of late twelfth-century Germany. Despite political problems which hampered its recruitment, the eventual expedition was on a considerable scale and probably not much smaller than that led by Frederick Barbarossa in 1189–90. The genesis of the expedition also throws a revealing light on Staufen rule over Germany, and in particular on the relations of the emperor with his princely subjects, especially in the way the preparation for the crusade was connected to Henry VI’s plans for securing the succession for his dynasty. It is also suggested that the crusade was far more significant to the policy of Henry VI than has hitherto been realized.

Henrique VI de Hoenstaufenem majestade: uma análise de suas representações imagéticas entre o Liber ad honorem augusti (1197) e o Códex Manesse (1340)

We seek in this article to analyze the developments of iconographic representations of the monarch in majesty between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, from images that represent Emperor Henry VI of the Holy Roman Empire extracted from the Liber ad honorem Augusti (1197) and the Codex Manesse (1340). Henry VI is a monarch understudied by Brazilian medievalist historiography, which usually gives more attention to its predecessor and immediate successor, the Emperors Frederick I and Frederick II. However, he was a figure of great importance in his time, being responsible for the considerable expansion of the revitalization program of the imperial prestige inherited from his father, through the conquest of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, the submission of various kingdoms to the Holy Roman Empire, the leadership in the Crusader movement, and was a poet. We analyze the iconographic production focused on Henry VI through processes of stereotyping and depersonalization of representations, and resorting to the principle of them, during the Ottonian dynasty (tenth century), as well through the process of establishment of a transpersonal monarchy in the Empire from the eleventh century.

Pope Gregory X and the Crusades

Pope Gregory X stood at the very centre of the crusading movement in the later thirteenth century. An able diplomat, he showed himself adept at navigating the political waters of Europe and the Mediterranean World. His crusade gained the participation of virtually all of the leaders of Western Europe, and even the Byzantine emperor and the Ilkhan of the Mongols: crucial if his crusade were to have a chance of defeating the very formidable and successful Mamluk Sultan Baybars. However, Gregory's premature death put paid to his crusade plans. Perhaps because of this, Gregory has hitherto been somewhat neglected by historians - a gap which this book aims to fill. It provides a full account of his contribution to the Crusade, demonstrating that he left a lasting mark on how crusading would operate in the years to come. Philip Baldwin received his doctorate from Queen Mary, University of London.

Pisa, Catalonia, and Muslim Pirates: Intercultural Exchanges in the Balearic Crusade of 1113–1115

Beyond being the earliest clear interaction between Pisa and Barcelona, the Balearic Crusade was also one of the earliest Iberian extensions of the crusading movement. Afterward, Pisa abandoned its bellicose policy toward Western Mediterranean Muslim cities in favor of friendly diplomatic relations and went from protecting Christian cities on the Tyrrhenian to competing aggressively and warring against them. Simultaneously, Catalonia built a navy for campaigns against Muslim targets, sought papal benefits for such campaigns, and formed international coalitions for their execution, all of which helped solidify Catalonia as a political unit and pushed it towards more international commercial integration. Many of these shifts have been noted before but rarely tied to the Balearic Crusade; this article seeks to rectify this scholarly lacuna.

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.

The Crusader States By MALCOLM BARBER

In the last years, quite a number of comprehensive overviews of the history of the Crusades have been published. This phenomenon is normally justified by the events in 2001 and the consequent so-called ‘war on terrorism’. Many of these publications cover a wide range of topics; they embrace developments in Europe as well as in Outremer and take several centuries into consideration. In relation to these studies, Malcolm Barber at first seems to focus on a much less ambitious subject. Instead of analysing the numerous aspects of the crusading movement and retelling the events of the Crusades themselves, his study concentrates on the four territories founded in the Levant during or after the First Crusade in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, a closer look reveals that the task is far more ambitious. Right at the beginning, Barber defines his aim as the attempt to foster a new understanding of the culture that emerged in these states by showing ‘this society as an integrated whole’ (p. xii). Still, the author openly admits that political history and military events stay in the centre of his narrative, although he also includes other facets like climate and natural resources, religious institutions and aspects of social history. This concentration can be explained by the distribution of the source material. By comparison, other aspects of the history of the Crusader states, e.g. most of the religious institutions,1 and including even the dioceses, are, at best, fragmentarily documented. The same is true for the development between the various groups of residents of the Crusader States and poses a serious obstacle to Barber’s aim.2 Barber deliberately chooses a chronological approach. For the reader, this proves to be sometimes difficult in view of the remarkable number of protagonists as well as the complex and unstable political situation.

Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 Edited by Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters, and James M. Powell (review)

Reviewed by: Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 Edited by Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters, and James M. Powell Helen J. Nicholson Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291. Edited by Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters, and James M. Powell. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2013. Pp, xxii, 512. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-8122-4478-6.) The popularity of the crusades among university and school students has never been greater, but every teacher of the subject knows the difficulties of finding good translations of medieval documents. Translations of complete crusade chronicles and collections of documents relating to specific crusades are invaluable, but teachers and their students need a wide range of materials to gain a broad understanding of the whole of the crusading movement. For this reason, the wide diversity of crusading activity in the thirteenth century is a particular challenge to teach. This volume will be a vital tool to all teaching and studying the crusade in the thirteenth century. It is a revision and considerable expansion of Edward Peters’s valuable collection of documents in English translation, Christian Society and the Crusades, 1198–1229 (Philadelphia, 1971). Peters has been assisted in his task by the greatly respected scholar James M. Powell (who regrettably did not live to see the work in print; his fellow editors have dedicated the volume to him) and by Jessalynn Bird, whose research on James of Vitry is already well known to crusade scholars. [End Page 126] The book begins with a detailed introduction that sets out the background to crusading in the thirteenth century. This is followed by seventy-three translated documents, divided into ten sections. Some of these cover the traditional chronological approach to studying the crusades, including sections on the crusades during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III, the Fifth Crusade (1213–21), the Emperor Frederick II’s Crusade (1227–29), the Barons’ Crusade (1234–45), and the crusades of King Louis IX (1248–70). The translated texts are not simply narratives but also include material that will widen readers’ knowledge of crusading culture such as intercessory processions at Rome in 1212, crusade recruiters in Marseilles in 1224, and Rutebuef’s lament on the Holy Land in 1266. These sections also contain descriptions of crusading activity that is often overlooked in accounts which focus on the crusades to the eastern Mediterranean: for example, the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, the Children’s Crusade in 1212–13, and the Pastoureaux in 1251. Other sections of the book contain translated texts on “Crusade and Council, 1213–15”; crusading activity against the Mongols, 1241–62; the crusades in Italy, 1241–68; and the experiences of those who went on crusades. The final section of the book describes “The Road to Acre, 1265–1291,” including contemporary discussion of why the crusade had failed, crusade plans, and descriptions of the final loss of the city of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291. There is a detailed index, which will enable readers to trace many references to (for example) liturgy, the poor, and women on crusade. Each section opens with an analysis and historical survey of the translated texts, followed by a short, individual introduction to each document. Even experts on the period will find material that is both unfamiliar and valuable. Altogether, this is a most impressive collection that will prove an invaluable resource to teachers and students alike. Regrettably, the price of the hardcover edition will put it beyond the resources of most students, limiting its potential as a course text. It is hoped that the publishers will produce a softcover version or an ebook edition. Helen J. Nicholson Cardiff University Copyright © 2014 The Catholic University of America Press

Medieval Landscape Transformation in the Southeast and Eastern Baltic: Palaeoenvironmental Perspectives on the Colanisation of Frontier Landscapes

The history of the medieval Baltic is dominated by the crusading movement of the 13th to 15th centuries. The crusades resulted in significant changes to the organisation, ownership and administration of the landscape, with a significant shift in patterns of land use. However, our understanding of the environmental impact of the crusades has been almost exclusively informed by written sources. This paper synthesises existing palynological evidence for medieval landscape transformation in the southeast and eastern Baltic, focusing on the ecological impact of the crusading movement, and considers some key questions, challenges and priorities for future research. Key words: Crusades, human impact, woodland clearance, agricultural intensification, palynology. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ab.v20i0.806

Romance, Crusade, and the Orient in King Henry III of England’s Royal Chambers

This article reexamines Henry III’s mid-thirteenth century commissions for wall paintings of the life of Alexander the Great and the story of the Battle of Antioch in his royal palaces. In order to cast a new light on these cycles, it considers the ideological roots of these chambers as they relate to their romance literary sources and the crusade movement. Offering spectacular “virtual” adventures to all who entered them, it argues that the Alexander and Antioch Chambers participated in new exotic visions of the East, blending crusade “history” and more chivalric or romantic modes of story telling. This article thus explores the more imaginative properties of these spaces in the tradition of mental pilgrimage or devotional crusading. By considering the ways in which these painted chambers attempted to localize the East, the Orient, in England, this article ultimately endeavors to integrate them into a broader discourse on the visual culture of crusading in thirteenth-century England.

The Forgotten Crusaders: Poland and the Crusader Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries by Mikolaj Gladysz (review)

Reviewed by: The Forgotten Crusaders: Poland and the Crusader Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries by Mikolaj Gladysz William Urban The Forgotten Crusaders: Poland and the Crusader Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. By Mikolaj Gladysz. [The Northern World: North Europe and the Baltic, c. 400-1700 AD, Peoples, Economies and Cultures, Vol. 56.] (Leiden: Brill. 2012. Pp. xxv, 433: $243.00. ISBN 978-9-004-18551-7; ebook 978-9-004-22336-3.) The title describes the situation exactly—whereas most medievalists are aware of the Scandinavian and German crusades in the Baltic, they know nothing about the Polish contributions. Indeed, this was a troubled era for the Polish kingdom—the division of the dynastic lands had led to endless rivalries; the Mongols sacked Cracow; Lithuanian pagans ravaged frontier regions; and the Teutonic Knights, pushing along the Baltic coast, became too strong to expel or even tame. Chronicle entries were sparse, and documents were not informative. No wonder Polish crusading efforts were forgotten. [End Page 545] This is not a book for beginners. There is no narrative, no drama, no translations of the many Latin citations. Medievalists, on the other hand, will find it extremely valuable. Mikolaj Gladysz is good at analyzing papal documents calling for volunteers and contributions to the crusading cause, and in describing the role of Polish churchmen in furthering them. Gladysz argues that Polish crusading efforts reflected the growing interest in Western culture and chivalric practices. This means that although there were few crusaders in the twelfth century, there were ever more in the thirteenth century. The first significant participation in expeditions to the Holy Land, both in men and money, was the Fifth Crusade that foundered in Egypt. Closer to home, Polish crusading armies fought against pagans in Prussia—most important for the decisive campaign of 1235—but although interest in that crusade never quite died away, rulers and churchmen were distracted by Mongol invasions, domestic disorders, and the papal emphasis on recovering Jerusalem. The contest between the popes and Frederick II was replicated in Poland when bishops declared holy wars against ambitious members of the Piast dynasty, and there were dangerous enemies to the east. Therefore, while the crusading movement was staggering from defeats in the Holy Land, Poles could do little more than contribute money. Fragmentary records make it difficult to judge the joint efforts with Bohemia, Hungary, and the Teutonic Order. The last Polish campaigns against the Mongols were almost as obscure as those a century earlier. The author appropriately relied on Polish research. Gladysz consulted only a few English-language articles and books (citing only one of this reviewer's books on the crusades to Prussia and the Baltic and then using only the outdated first edition). This is not a major shortcoming, but given the ever more numerous publications by Western historians, it is one that young Polish scholars might keep in mind. One can understand why the original publication did not get a good reception by the general public, and therefore we must praise all the more those scholars who encouraged its translation into English and publication. Its price is high, but every research library should take a deep breath and buy it. William Urban Monmouth College, IL Copyright © 2013 The Catholic University of America Press

Crusading and crusade memory in Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus miraculorum

This article is a preliminary investigation into the way the Cistercians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries conceptualised and contextualised the history of the crusading movement, with a specific focus on the way in which they integrated their involvement in crusading into the Order's sense of institutional memory and corporate identity. The article presents a study of Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogus miraculorum, a collection of exempla that was composed for the edification of Cistercian novices in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Although the text is well known to medievalists (and particularly to scholars of medieval Cisterciana), it has yet to be subjected to a close reading by historians of the crusades. By examining the way in which Caesarius used and described the crusades in the Dialogus, the article demonstrates the potential of using non-narrative texts to explore medieval understandings of the crusading past and, more generally, illustrates further the importance of warfare in the shaping of medieval monastic culture.

An Anglican View of the Crusades: Thomas Fuller’s The Historie of the Holy Warre

This essay is concerned with the ways in which the English Reformation changed the understanding of the crusade movement from that held in the Middle Ages. The papally inspired crusade movement was not an attractive subject to sixteenth-century Protestant scholars. As Christopher Tyerman has remarked in his study, England and the Crusades, it was not until 1639 that ‘Thomas Fuller published his Historie of the Holy Warre, the first, and one of the more interesting histories of the crusades written by an Englishman’. The only earlier post-Reformation English work which had touched on this subject was Richard Knolles’ The Generall Historie of the Turks (1603). Its first book was entitled ‘The Generall Historie of the Turks before the Rising of the Ottoman Familie’, and inevitably contained some account of crusading activity, though that was incidental to its main theme. Knolles’ book proved popular and a second edition was published in 1610, showing that there was a public for works of this kind.

Revisiting the Anglo-Norman Crusaders' Failed Attempt to Conquer Lisbon c. 1142

This article revisits the failed attempt to conquer Lisbon by a combined host of Anglo-Norman and Portuguese crusaders in 1142 within the wider context of both the crusader movement to the Holy Land and the Iberian Reconquista. Focusing on the Historia Gothorum, De expugnatione Lyxbonensi and other sources, it endeavours to demonstrate the degree of involvement of the Anglo-Norman contingents in maritime adventures at a time when no other crusades had been declared. Finally, it illustrates the consequence of this undertaking for the final conquest of Lisbon, as part of the Second Crusade, in 1147.

Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (review)

Reviewed by: Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne Elizabeth Makowski Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne. By Anne E. Lester. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2011. Pp. xxiv, 261. $45.00. ISBN 978-0-8014-4989-5.) Like those who participated in the women’s religious movement elsewhere in Europe, the pious women of thirteenth-century Champagne aspired to lives of penitential asceticism coupled with service to the sick and the poor, the vita apostolica. Their earliest communities in Champagne, like those created by mulieres religiosae in other regions, were informal and unaffiliated with any monastic order—facts that garnered their members a share in the hierarchical suspicion generally accorded these groups. But unlike their counterparts in Italy and in the Low Countries, the women of Champagne left behind neither hagiographical texts extolling an exceptional leader (they had no St. Clare of Assisi or Mary of Oignies) nor a body of regulatory literature that might shed light on their collective aims and goals. To explore the evolution of this regional variant of a broadly based and influential type of piety, Anne Lester has used what the women of Champagne and their patrons did bequeath, and in some abundance. By analyzing charters, and petitions, along with the receipts of sales and donations, she deftly tells an untold story of the “lived experience of religious ideals and reform at work” (p. 4). Given the traditional historiography concerning the Cistercians and religious women, Lester’s story has a surprising twist. Scholars have long argued that the Cistercian statute of 1228, which effectively banned the creation of new female houses, forced quasi-religious women to turn instead to the “new orders” for spiritual oversight. As Poor Clares, Dominican penitents, or tertiaries, these women brought vital spirituality to their institutions, whereas existing thirteenth-century Cistercian nunneries became increasingly decadent and devoid of religious idealism. In contrast, Lester finds that the ideals of the women’s movement in Champagne meshed so well with those of the Cistercians that informal communities of women were consistently transformed into Cistercian nunneries: “With rare exceptions, nearly all of the Cistercian convents founded in the county of Champagne between 1226 and 1239 trace their beginnings to earlier communities of unaffiliated religious women” (p.19). The order displayed a commitment to manual labor and charity, as did the women whose hospices and leper houses became Cistercian convents in the 1230s. Cistercian identification with, and prayerful support for, the crusading movement also appealed to the pious women of Champagne. Cistercian ideals were so compatible with their spirituality in fact that petitions for incorporation into the order steadily increased even after the promulgation of the 1228 exclusionary statute. But, as the author is quick to note, that watershed did mark the end of an era. The flexible, readily modified strategies that had been employed in forming associations with women would give way to a new formalism in the next decade: “After 1228, religious [End Page 796] zeal had to contend with the administrative realities of building fabric, gifts, endowments, rents, taxes, and all the matters of daily life that ensured stability, regulation and claustration” (p. 96). Indeed, the seriousness with which affiliated nunneries took Pope Boniface VIII’s strict cloister regulation of 1298 appears to have contributed to their decline in the disaster-ridden fourteenth century. Creating Cistercian Nuns explores the nuanced relationships that made it possible to establish austere, exemplary, and permanent monastic communities for women in thirteenth-century Champagne. Lester goes beyond legislative rhetoric to describe the vital links forged between Cistercian monks and quasi-religious religious women—bonds based on kinship, friendship, or simply (and perhaps most tellingly) a common spiritual identity. Elizabeth Makowski Texas State University Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

The forgotten crusaders: Poland and the crusader movement in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

By analysing cases of Polish involvement in the crusades and collecting traces of the crusading ideology and preaching in Polish sources from the 12th and 13th century, the book makes a valuable contribution to the discussion about the place of Central Europe in medieval Western Civilization.

Wales and the Crusades, c.1095-1291

This original study, focussing on the impact of the crusading movement in medieval Wales, considers both the enthusiasm of the Welsh and those living in Wales and its borders for the crusades, as well as the domestic impact of the movement on warfare, literature, politics and patronage. The location of Wales on the periphery of mainstream Europe, and its perceived status as religiously and culturally underdeveloped did not make it the most obvious candidate for crusading involvement, but this study demonstrates that both native and settler took part in the crusades, supported the military orders, and wrote about events in the Holy Land. Efforts were made to recruit the Welsh in 1188, suggesting contemporary appreciation for Welsh fighting skills, even though crusaders from Wales have been overlooked in modern studies. By looking at patterns of participation this study shows how domestic warfare influenced the desire and willingness to join the crusade, and the effect of such absences on the properties of those who did go. The difference between north and south Wales, Marcher lord and native prince, Flemish noble and minor landholder are considered to show how crusading affected a broad spread of society. Finally, the political role of crusading participation as a way to remove potential troublemakers and cement English control over Wales is considered as the close of the peak years of crusading coincided with the final conquest of Wales in 1282.