Depicting the Holy War: Crusader Imagery in Medieval French and English Murals
By Elizabeth Lapina
The Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN: 9780271099248
How did Europeans view the crusades during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? According to this book, the answer is literally painted on the walls. It examines five sets of murals from the period, revealing how medieval people chose to depict, remember, and interpret the crusades.
Excerpt:
According to the traditional definition, so-called crusader art was produced in the Latin States between the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and the fall of Acre in 1291. It includes manuscripts, sculpture, mosaics, icons, ivories, mural paintings, coins, and other objects that still survive in relatively large quantities. Most of the examples of crusader art, narrowly defined, are products of cross-cultural interactions involving multiple actors, including various groups of Latin Christians, Eastern Christians, and Muslims. The present monograph will treat a different collection of “crusader art”: visual sources produced in western Europe that represent or reflect crusades.
Who is this book for?
Although this book focuses on five sites in England and France—four churches and one secular location—it tackles a much larger subject: the Crusader art. The murals examined here provide a valuable window into how medieval people understood the crusades, viewed the concept of “holy” violence, and celebrated the knights who fought in these campaigns.
Those interested in crusading history will find this book sheds light on an understudied aspect of the movement. At the same time, scholars of medieval art, religious culture, and church decoration will also benefit from its insights into how the crusades were represented and remembered in the medieval world.
The Author
Elizabeth Lapina is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This work is representative of her diverse research on the crusades.
We asked Elizabeth about her reasons for writing this book. She replied:
“I worked on this book for longer than I was a medievalist. The chapter on the paintings of Berze-la-Ville is based on my Maitrise (MA) thesis, which I wrote at the University of Paris 1 in 2000/2001. The question is why I decided to spend a year in Paris learning all about Berze-la-Ville has a simple answer: I realized by that point that looking at medieval art made me happy. A quarter of a century later, it still does! I cannot rationalize this attraction entirely, but I certainly enjoy the challenge of trying to understand what was inside the heads of the people who made it.
“After finishing my Maitrise, I moved in a different direction and wrote my PhD thesis on the chronicles of the First Crusade. I wanted to learn about how medieval authors grappled with these unprecedented events to narrate them in a way that suited their purposes. The chronicles was the subject of my first monograph (Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade) and several articles (including “Celestial Phenomena of 1097/1098 in the Chronicles of the First Crusade,” published in 2023, and “A Swift Answer: Wind in the Sources of Crusades,” in press).
“My latest monograph — which studies the crusades as represented or reflected in twelfth and thirteenth-century mural paintings — combines my two interests: in medieval art and in historical narratives. The message of the programs that I studied in the monograph tends to be, simply put, that some individuals and groups of people are God’s enemies and should be annihilated. Today more than ever, I think it’s important to study past manifestations of this idea, to learn about how it was presented and defended and to understand what made it so attractive.”
Depicting the Holy War: Crusader Imagery in Medieval French and English Murals
By Elizabeth Lapina
The Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN: 9780271099248
How did Europeans view the crusades during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? According to this book, the answer is literally painted on the walls. It examines five sets of murals from the period, revealing how medieval people chose to depict, remember, and interpret the crusades.
Excerpt:
According to the traditional definition, so-called crusader art was produced in the Latin States between the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 and the fall of Acre in 1291. It includes manuscripts, sculpture, mosaics, icons, ivories, mural paintings, coins, and other objects that still survive in relatively large quantities. Most of the examples of crusader art, narrowly defined, are products of cross-cultural interactions involving multiple actors, including various groups of Latin Christians, Eastern Christians, and Muslims. The present monograph will treat a different collection of “crusader art”: visual sources produced in western Europe that represent or reflect crusades.
Who is this book for?
Although this book focuses on five sites in England and France—four churches and one secular location—it tackles a much larger subject: the Crusader art. The murals examined here provide a valuable window into how medieval people understood the crusades, viewed the concept of “holy” violence, and celebrated the knights who fought in these campaigns.
Those interested in crusading history will find this book sheds light on an understudied aspect of the movement. At the same time, scholars of medieval art, religious culture, and church decoration will also benefit from its insights into how the crusades were represented and remembered in the medieval world.
The Author
Elizabeth Lapina is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This work is representative of her diverse research on the crusades.
We asked Elizabeth about her reasons for writing this book. She replied:
“I worked on this book for longer than I was a medievalist. The chapter on the paintings of Berze-la-Ville is based on my Maitrise (MA) thesis, which I wrote at the University of Paris 1 in 2000/2001. The question is why I decided to spend a year in Paris learning all about Berze-la-Ville has a simple answer: I realized by that point that looking at medieval art made me happy. A quarter of a century later, it still does! I cannot rationalize this attraction entirely, but I certainly enjoy the challenge of trying to understand what was inside the heads of the people who made it.
“After finishing my Maitrise, I moved in a different direction and wrote my PhD thesis on the chronicles of the First Crusade. I wanted to learn about how medieval authors grappled with these unprecedented events to narrate them in a way that suited their purposes. The chronicles was the subject of my first monograph (Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade) and several articles (including “Celestial Phenomena of 1097/1098 in the Chronicles of the First Crusade,” published in 2023, and “A Swift Answer: Wind in the Sources of Crusades,” in press).
“My latest monograph — which studies the crusades as represented or reflected in twelfth and thirteenth-century mural paintings — combines my two interests: in medieval art and in historical narratives. The message of the programs that I studied in the monograph tends to be, simply put, that some individuals and groups of people are God’s enemies and should be annihilated. Today more than ever, I think it’s important to study past manifestations of this idea, to learn about how it was presented and defended and to understand what made it so attractive.”
You can learn more about this book from the publisher’s website.
You can buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Subscribe to Medievalverse
Related Posts