The Rise and Fall of British Crusader Medievalism, c. 1825-1945

2021

Engaging the Crusades The Memory and Legacy of Crusading Engaging the Crusades is a series of volumes that offer initial windows into the ways in which the crusades have been used in the last two centuries, demonstrating that the memory of the crusades is an important and emerging subject. Together, these studies suggest that the memory of the crusades, in the modern period, is a productive, exciting, and much needed area of investigation.

Studies in Medievalism, 2016

A discussion of British contributions to crusading studies in the second half of the twentieth century.

2005

Perceptions of the Crusades from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century: Engaging the Crusades, Volume One, 2018

The crusades and crusaders resonated with imperial Britons and were depicted with regularity in literature through the Victorian and Edwardian eras. This chapter examines crusading fiction written by prominent author-educators from 1825 to 1917 (Walter Scott, Charlotte M. Yonge, George A. Henty and Henry Newbolt) and demonstrates how the crusades served as a vehicle of enculturation for the empire’s youth: crusader medievalism can be seen to have borne the weight of complementary attempts to educate young readers in what it meant to be a patriotic, chivalrous and pious Briton in the century leading up to the First World War.

The Journal of Modern History, 2019

Crusading and Warfare in the Middle Ages: Realities and Representations. Essays in Honour of John France. Edited by Simon John and Nicholas Morton. Routledge. 2014. xxv + 231pp. £85.00. This Festschrift for John France is a worthy and deserved tribute to the historian's contributions to crusading scholarship. Maintaining a sharp focus, the editors have gathered together a truly impressive array of leading historians on the crusades and medieval military history, with only three of the fifteen chapters not addressing the crusades. Clifford J. Rogers's opening piece on Carolingian cavalry is a lively but friendly counter to France's emphasis on the infantryman in medieval warfare, restoring the cavalryman to his leading role in the wars of the age. He pays special attention to a close reading of Annales regni Francorum, interpreting it at variance with France and Bachrach, especially for the battle of 784 near the river Hase. He also scrutinizes the 876 battle of Andernach to argue again for the dominance of cavalry. Nicholas Morton's contribution on the first crusaders' foreknowledge of their enemies offers for the recruitment stage of the First Crusade a productive look at the usage of European terminology for the enemy: 'pagans', 'Saracens', 'gentiles' and/or 'Turks', the last being 'relatively unknown', he argues 'tentatively' (p. 68). Richard Abels and Denys Pringle examine illustrative evidence for their excellent chapters. Abels studies the glorious mid-thirteenth-century Morgan Picture Bible (the Maciejowski Bible), a wonderful source for medieval military historians, arguing persuasively that the Bible 'reflected the cultural expectations of its patron and his household knights' so that they might be 'validated and legitimated as a military elite, one in which battles predominated and knights remained supreme' (p. 14). The Bible depicts warfare as they wanted it to be portrayed, not as it was. Pringle's short but fascinating piece scrutinizes an early thirteenth-century graffito of a traction trebuchet in an Etruscan tomb in northern Italy. Another brief chapter by Benjamin Kedar, predominantly comprising quotations, assesses an early Muslim response to the first crusade. The neglected topic of military intelligence and espionage on the First Crusade is the subject of Susan Edgington's interesting explorative study, recognizing the difficulties of an area obviously clouded in secrecy. (Some useful broader context night have been supplied by Michael Prestwich's 1994 article on military intelligence under the Norman and Angevin kings.) Edgington has stated elsewhere that Ralph of Caen's Gesta Tancredi is the most overlooked of the First Crusade's major contemporary sources. Bernard and David Bachrach aim to put this right with an insightful chapter on Ralph

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2006

On 12 June 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the islands of Malta. The Knights Hospitaller surrendered with little fight, and the independently recognized polity of the Knights of St. John, the last bastion of the medieval chivalric orders, fell. Founded in the Middle Ages as a military order created both to carry the sword against Islam and provide shelter and medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Knights had by the end of the eighteenth century become an anachronism. The Ottoman Empire, the last of the great Muslim powers of the Mediterranean, had long been considered little more than a pawn in larger political struggles on the Continent. The practical application of crusading as church policy had long fallen out of favor. As a military force, the Order was no longer of any consequence. The Grand Council that directed the Order consisted for the most part of Maltese or Italian nobles of little formal training in the strategy and tactics of "modern" warfare. Historians of the late eighteenth century had come to the conclusion that the crusades of the Middle Ages were little more than the fanatical hate mongering of an unenlightened time. As Edward Gibbon wrote: "The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause.. .. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends.. .. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion.. .. The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country.. .." 1 However, we should not be too hasty in agreeing with Gibbon's assessment of crusading as merely an example of medieval "savage fanaticism." Quite apart from the purely romantic images of the knights in shining armor and damsels in distress which, folly or not, still remain with us today, many who retained power in Europe in the nineteenth century were not devotees of Hobbes or Gibbon, and did not take their historiographic cues from the 2 See Patrick Hutton's review article, "Recent Scholarship on Memory and History," History Teacher 33, 4 (2000), 533-48. 3 Michaud's work was republished throughout the nineteenth century.

International Journal of Military History and Historiography. Special Issue: “The Appropriation and Weaponisation of the Crusades in the Modern Era”, guest editor, Jason T. Roche, Volume 41(2): 187-207, 2021

The introductory article proposes the hypothesis, which informed the decision making and editorial work in the Special Issue, that appropriations and weaponisations of the crusades in the modern era rely on culturally embedded master narratives of the past that are often thought to encompass public or cultural memories. Crucially, medievalism, communicated through metonyms, metaphors, symbols and motifs frequently acts as a placeholder instead of the master narratives themselves. The article addresses differences between medievalists' and modernists' conceptions of crusades, especially highlighting how the very meaning of words - such as crusade - differ in the respective fields. But the matter at hand goes beyond semantics, for the notion that the act of crusading is a live and potent issue is hard to ignore. There exists a complex and multifaceted crusading present. That people can appeal to master narratives of the crusades via mutable medievalism, which embodies zero-sum, Manichaean-type "clash of civilisations" scenarios, helps explain the continued appeal of the crusades to those who seek to weaponise them. It is hoped that the contributions to the special issue, introduced towards the end of the article, further a better understanding of the ways this has happened in the modern era.

The Crusader World is a multidisciplinary survey of the current state of research in the field of crusader studies, an area of study which has become increasingly popular in recent years. In this volume Adrian Boas draws together an impressive range of academics, including work from renowned scholars as well as a number of thought-provoking pieces from emerging researchers, in order to provide broad coverage of the major aspects of the period. This authoritative work will play an important role in the future direction of crusading studies. This volume enriches present knowledge of the crusades, addressing such wide-ranging subjects as: intelligence and espionage, gender issues, religious celebrations in crusader Jerusalem, political struggles in crusader Antioch, the archaeological study of battle sites and fortifications, diseases suffered by the crusaders, crusading in northern Europe and Spain and the impact of crusader art. The relationship between crusaders and Muslims, two distinct and in many way opposing cultures, is also examined in depth, including a discussion of how the Franks perceived their enemies. Arranged into eight thematic sections, The Crusader World considers many central issues as well as a large number of less familiar topics of the crusades, crusader society, history and culture. With over 100 photographs, line drawings and maps, this impressive collection of essays is a key resource for students and scholars alike.