Where the Middle Ages Begin
The meteoric rise of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon (more commonly known as the Knights Templar) and their equally swift fall has fueled fanciful tales and scholarly research. The order promoted their mythological origins and the extreme charges leveled against them by Philip IV of France (1285-1314) created an atmosphere of speculation.
In the spring and summer of 1096, bands of crusaders, at times with the help of the local population, destroyed Jewish life and property before leaving for the East.
In his Historia Ierosolymitana, completed within one generation of the First Crusade, Albert of Aachen tells a curious story about some rustics, guided by divinely inspired goose and a she-goat to take the holy path to Jerusalem.
Professor Jay Rubenstein deals with a fascinating aspect of the early Crusaders – how these Western European holy warriors quickly adopted the lifestyles and practices of the East, just within a few years of conquering the area.
The Normans remain as the standard bearer of the pre-revisionist interpretation of crusader motives – for gold and glory, but not for God. However, examination of the evidence does not bear this distinction out.
In preaching the First Crusade, Pope Urban II created a synthesis of holy war and pilgrimage, but, by analysing the depiction of fear in histories of the First Crusade, this article supports the position that it was only after the success of the Crusade that a coherent and internally consistent body of thought on crusading developed.
Medieval historians have considered the role of technology for some time; it is perhaps now appropriate to reexamine conclusions reached by early historians of technology.
The success of the First Crusade by the Christian armies caught the interest and arrested the imagination of contemporaries, stimulating the production of a large number of historical narratives. Four eyewitness accounts, as well as letters written by the crusaders to the West, were taken up by later authors, re-worked and re-fashioned into new narratives; a process which continued throughout the twelfth century and beyond.
By her own account Anna Comnena began to write the Alexiad shortly after the death of her husband, Nicephorus Bryennios, in 1137.
To this day, it remains unclear what Pope Urban II actually intended the Crusaders to do once they arrived in Jerusalem
Articles on the First Crusade: A Greek Source on the Origin of the First Crusade, by Peter Charanis The Historiography of the Crusades, by Giles Constable God wills it: communitas, penance and ritual in the spatiotemporal of the First Crusade, by William Warren Dwyer Pagan Peverel: An Anglo-Norman Crusader, by Susan Edgington Ideology and Motivations in […]
When Pope Urban II called for a military campaign to the Holy Land in 1095, he launched what would be the first in a series of Christian crusades. But even more than that, he advocated a form of warfare that would be pleasing to God.
Ideology and Motivations in the First Crusade By Jean Flori Palgrave Advances in the Crusades, ed. Helen J. Nicholson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Introduction: The ideology of crusade did not suddenly appear with Pope Urban II’s appeal at Clermont in November 1095. Scholars now acknowledge that it resulted from a slow evolution that, in the […]
Saint Peter and Paul Church (Sinan Pasha Mosque), Famagusta: A Forgotten Gothic Moment in Northern Cyprus Walsh, Michael Inferno, Volume IX, 2004 Abstract When Pope Urban II called the Council of Clermont in 1095, and in so doing ordered the start of the Crusades to the Holy Land, it was neither obvious nor predictable what […]
FROM THE STATELY TO THE SMUTTY: SHIFTING PERCEPTIONS OF THE CRUSADES IN AN ILLUMINATED CHRONICLE Leson, Robert Oeuvre, Newsletter of the Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Spring (2009) Abstract Among the most important sources for the study of the Crusades is a medieval chronicle known as the Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum […]
Why did people go on the First Crusade?
We’re on a Mission from God: A Translation, Commentary, and Essay Concerning The Hierosolymita by Ekkehard of Aura King, Matthew LaBarge (University of Washington) History Honours Thesis, University of Washington, March 7, 2011 Abstract This project is a translation, essay, and commentary about the Hierosolymita by Ekkehard of Aura. Written in the early 12th century, […]
Curiously, far less attention has been devoted to the most monumental of medieval Jewish persecutions, one that eradicated almost entirely the principal Jewish communities of Europe — those of the Rhineland — along with many other areas.
The story of how the Holy Lance was uncovered, the effect it had on the crusaders and how it was interpreted by contemporary witnesses, medieval chroniclers and modern historians alike, will be the main focal point for this thesis.
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