The Crusades And Visual Culture

The crusades had a profound impact on medieval and early modern societies, but there have been few studies dedicated to investigating how the crusading movement influenced medieval visual cultures. Written by scholars from around the world working in the domains of art history and history, the essays in this volume examine the ways in which ideas of crusading were realized in a broad variety of media (including manuscripts, cartography, sculpture, mural paintings, and metalwork).

The crusades, whether realized or merely planned, had a profound impact on medieval and early modern societies. Numerous scholars in the fields of history and literature have explored the influence of crusading ideas, values, aspirations and anxieties in both the Latin States and Europe. However, there have been few studies dedicated to investigating how the crusading movement influenced and was reflected in medieval visual cultures. Written by scholars from around the world working in the domains of art history and history, the essays in this volume examine the ways in which ideas of crusading were realized in a broad variety of media (including manuscripts, cartography, sculpture, mural paintings, and metalwork). Arguing implicitly for recognition of the conceptual frameworks of crusades that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries, the volume explores the pervasive influence and diverse expression of the crusading movement from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries.

This fully updated and expanded edition of The Crusades: A History provides an authoritative exploration of one of the most significant topics in medieval and religious history. From the First Crusade right up to the present day, Jonathan Riley-Smith and Susanna Throop investigate the phenomenon of crusading and the crusaders themselves. Now in its 4th edition, this landmark text includes: - A new and more balanced book structure with updated terminology designed to help instructors and students alike - Deliberate incorporation of a wider range of historical perspectives, including Byzantine and Islamic historiographies, crusading against Christians and within Europe, women and gender, and the crusades in the context of Afro-Eurasian history - A dramatically expanded discussion of crusading from the sixteenth through twenty-first centuries - A fully up-to-date bibliographic essay - Additional textboxes, maps, and images The Crusades: A History is the definitive text on the subject for students and scholars alike.

Broadly defining crusading as both a physical act and a spiritual goal, this is a diachronic study of the impact of the crusade movement and devotion to the holy city of Jerusalem on English visual culture, religious imagination and identity. The crusade movement concurrently formed dynamic international networks and disturbed geographic, cultural, religious and social boundaries in both the East and West. Because the most immediate zone for cultural and artistic exchange during the Crusades was the Holy Land, it has been the subject of immense amounts of historical and art historical scholarship examining issues of cultural and visual appropriation, assimilation and even resistance. However, the remapping of Christian territory after the First Crusade (1095-99), the establishment of transnational corporations (i.e., the military orders) and the reinvigoration of travel between East and West had an equally profound, yet surprisingly unexplored, impact on the visual culture and religious imagination of western Europe. Analyzing diverse visual material, from images of the military orders on seals, and monastic maps of Palestine in manuscripts, to royal chambers with paintings of holy warfare and the display of Holy Land relics at court, my project juxtaposes sacred and secular commissions made for crusaders and affiliates of chivalric culture. It also analyzes art for those, like monks, who would never physically experience Jerusalem. My study considers the role of crusade in the construction of personal and institutional identity in England, proposing, for instance, that the English kings were increasingly compelled to fashion themselves in the idealized image of the rex crucesignatus, crusader king. It carefully tracks the evolving vision of the Holy Land in England as destination, image, spectacle, or goal adapted and domesticated for English patrons and audiences over the longue durée. Finally it shows there was a concerted effort in England to localize the crusade movement and make it an explicitly English phenomenon, and to domesticate the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem, through art and architecture, ritual and display.

An innovatory exploration of art and visual culture. Through carefully chosen themes and topics rather than through a general survey, the volumes approach the process of looking at works of art in terms of their audiences, functions and cross-cultural contexts. While focused on painting, sculpture and architecture, it also explores a wide range of visual culture in a variety of media and methods. "1000-1600: Medieval to Renaissance" includes essays on key themes of Medieval and Renaissance art, including the theory and function of religious art and a generic analysis of art at court. Explorations cover key canonical artists such as Simone Martini and Botticelli and key monuments including St Denis and Westminster Abbey, as well as less familiar examples.The first of three text books, published by Tate in association with the Open University, which insight for students of Art History, Art Theory and Humanities. Introduction Part 1: Visual cultures of medieval Christendom 1: Sacred art as the Bible of the Poor' 2: Sacred architecture, Gothic architecture 3: Sacred in secular, secular in sacred: the art of Simone Martini 4: To the Holy Land and back again: the art of the Crusades Part 2: The shifting contexts of Renaissance art 5: Art at court 6: Botticelli 7: Did women patrons have a Renaissance? Italy 1420-1520 8: From Candia to Toledo: El Greco and his art

How are the Crusades portrayed in popular culture today? Have the medieval images of chivalric and military heroes survived the eras of Orientalism and decolonization? The first of its kind, this comparative study examines representations of the Crusades in both European and Arab medieval texts and in 20th and 21st century transmedia recreations. It follows the cartography and illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages through modern, hybridized narratives in novels, film, comics and gaming. The shifting literary tastes, political agendas and cultural exchanges of audiences on both sides of the Mediterranean reflect their anxieties and ideals.

Crusading was a religious movement involving papal authorization, the incentive of remission of sins, pious motivation on behalf of the individual, and the justification of holy war. Much recent historiography in this area has focused on resolving the questions of what a crusade was, and why people went on them. But crusading became a cultural and social phenomenon that changed across time and geographical space. In turn, crusading was shaped by the ways specific crusades and their participants were remembered in specific historical contexts. Moreover, crusade memory had profound effects on the cultivation of family lineage, kinship ties, national and regional identity, and religious orthodoxy. Integrating memory into crusades scholarship thus offers new ways of exploring the aftermath of war, the construction of cultural and social memory, the role of women and families in this process, and the crusading movement itself. This book explores memory as a methodological means of understanding the crusades. It engages with theories of communicative memory, social and cultural memory, war commemoration, and historical processes of remembering. Contributions explore the variety of cultural forms used in cultivating crusade memory. Material, visual, liturgical and textual objects are all reflective of crusade culture and the process of crafting its memory, and the analysis of such sources is of particular interest. This publication furthers new trends in crusade scholarship which understand the crusades as a broad religious movement that called upon and developed within a wider cultural framework than previously acknowledged. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History.

This work contains information and analysis of the history, politics, economics, and culture of the medieval world. The six volumes stand as a history of the Crusades, spanning five centuries, encompassing Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perspectives.

A comprehensive history of the crusades ranges from the eleventh century to modern times and includes commentary on the art and architecture associated with the crusades and insights into the history of the knightly orders.

Remembering the Crusades and Crusading examines the diverse contexts in which crusading was memorialised and commemorated in the medieval world and beyond. The collection not only shows how the crusades were commemorated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but also considers the longer-term remembrance of the crusades into the modern era. This collection is divided into three sections, the first of which deals with the textual, material and visual sources used to remember. Each contributor introduces a particular body of source material and presents case studies using those sources in their own research. The second section contains four chapters examining specific communities active in commemorating the crusades, including religious communities, family groups and royal courts. Finally, the third section examines the cultural memory of crusading in the Byzantine, Iberian and Baltic regions beyond the early years, as well as the trajectory of crusading memory in the Muslim Middle East. This book draws together and extends the current debates in the history of the crusades and the history of memory and in so doing offers a fresh synthesis of material in both fields. It will be essential reading for students of the crusades and memory.