SSCLE Online PhD/ECR Conference
Session 3: Wednesday, 30 June 19.00-20.30 BST
3.1 Material Culture and the Crusades
Chair: Elizabeth Lapina (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Ana Núñez (Stanford University): Lost Mosaics and the Last Emperor: The Church of Nativity and Crusader Kingship in the Twelfth Century.
In this paper, I argue that the now lost Tree of Jesse/Abraham inside the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem functioned as a declaration of Frankish power in the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Tree of Jesse/Abraham figured on the western wall of the Nativity church, and was part of an elaborate decorative program carried out in the 1160s under the joint patronage of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, King Amalric I, and Bishop Raul of Bethlehem. I focus on one aspect of this now missing mosaic Tree—the pagan Sibyl—recuperating the crusader significance of this pre-Christian prophetess through both a sonic and textual appreciation that relies on the Latin liturgy of Jerusalem, pilgrimage accounts, and William of Tyre’s A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea. As a pre-Christian prophet of not just Christ, but also the Last Roman Emperor, who would defeat Gog and Magog and unite east and west, the Sibyl’s appearance inside the Nativity church speaks to, I argue, the eschatological framework of King Amalric’s reign. Furthermore, I contend that the Sibyl opens up space to reevaluate the relationship between Jerusalem and Constantinople which, in the 1160s, has been characterized as collaborative and harmonious. Instead, I suggest the possibility of contest and polemic; that in the image’s casting of King Amalric as the Last Roman Emperor, in the triumphant medium of glittering gold, the Jerusalem king challenged the Byzantine emperor’s own claim to such a leading role in the victorious narrative of Christian salvific history.
Ana C. Núñez is a PhD candidate in Medieval History at Stanford University. She majored in Late Antique-Medieval Studies at Pomona College in California (2017) and completed an MPhil in Medieval History at the University of Cambridge (2018). Her dissertation will look at rulership, eschatology, and twelfth-century reform in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, with a particular focus on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Amanda Charland (University of Glasgow): The Power of Spoliation in Crusader-era Ascalon.
This paper demonstrates the complex role of spoliated elements and how they offer broader insight into medieval political thought. The city walls of Fatimid and Frankish Ascalon incorporate a multitude of reused architectural elements. The Fatimids incorporated Roman columns into the construction of the city’s defences. A Fatimid inscription, dating to 1050 CE, commemorates the building of one of Ascalon’s Fatimid towers. This inscription was reused by the Franks during the city’s reconstruction from 1239–1241. Using Ascalon as a case study, this paper offers a wide-ranging contextual discussion of the city walls by analysing the spoliated elements including their materiality, colour, apotropaic power, and their association with prominent architectural features within the walls. Contemporary architectural evidence and primary source information is also examined. Using the theoretical concepts of biography and memory to understand the life of spoliated objects prior, during, and post reuse; the motivation for the act of spoliation; and the mnemonic properties associated with the objects, the spoliated elements unveil a broader insight into the use and function of the architecture which incorporates these reused objects. In the case of Ascalon, the spoliated elements demonstrate different notions of power. The Fatimids harnessed the apotropaic power of Roman columns to further fortify the city’s walls both physically and intangibly; and the Franks reused a Fatimid inscription to display Christian power over the Muslim walls.
Dr Amanda Charland received her doctorate in Archaeology from the University of Glasgow in 2014. During her doctoral research, Amanda travelled to Israel to survey and to study the ruins of Crusader-era city walls. Her particular interest lies in the interaction between different groups of people and how they alter walls through destruction, reconstruction, incorporation, ornamentation, or new construction. Other research highlights include: exploring the function of Cyprus’s Frankish castles; surveying and excavating Second World War aircraft wreckage in Scotland’s Highlands and Islands; and exploring the history of the University of Glasgow’s 19th and 20th century architecture. Amanda has co-authored a book with the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States. The book investigates the life of
a Pennsylvania farm from colonial times to the present. Presently, Amanda serves as an Affiliated Researcher with Temple University’s “Honor to the Soldier and Sailor Everywhere” Project, which is developing an administrative and legislative history of battlefield preservation in the US Federal Government.
Amichay Schwartz (University of Bar-Ilan): The Borders of the Holy Land as Represented in a Medieval Hebrew Map.
Medieval Jewish scholars have dealt with the borders of the Holy Land due to the heightened significance and legal implications of defining the land's sanctity. The first Hebrew map was created by Rashi, the well-known Jewish exegete of the 11th century (died 1105), and thereafter this genre became common. One variant of Rashi's map was appended to a 14th century treatise titled 'Kaftor Vaferach'. This book was written by Ashtori Ha-Parḥi, a Provencal Jew from Montpellier, born circa 1280. Exiled from France in 1306, he journeyed to Barcelona, and finally immigrated to the Holy Land. Between 1314 and 1322, he authored this book that focuses on the domains of Jewish law pertaining to the Land of Israel. In doing so, Ashtori determined the borders of the Holy Land and described its Biblical sites and towns, locating then in each tribe’s territory. The afore-mentioned map was appended to a manuscript dated 1542 (MS Milano B 76 Sup, fol. 452). This manuscript has not received sufficient attention in scholarly research. This paper intends to examine different aspects and characteristics of this map, e.g. borders and locations. The paper will demonstrate the influence of Ashtori's treatise as shown in the map and will propose that missing paragraphs from the treatise can be reconstructed when taking the map into account.
Chair: Elizabeth Lapina (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Ana Núñez (Stanford University): Lost Mosaics and the Last Emperor: The Church of Nativity and Crusader Kingship in the Twelfth Century.
In this paper, I argue that the now lost Tree of Jesse/Abraham inside the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem functioned as a declaration of Frankish power in the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Tree of Jesse/Abraham figured on the western wall of the Nativity church, and was part of an elaborate decorative program carried out in the 1160s under the joint patronage of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos, King Amalric I, and Bishop Raul of Bethlehem. I focus on one aspect of this now missing mosaic Tree—the pagan Sibyl—recuperating the crusader significance of this pre-Christian prophetess through both a sonic and textual appreciation that relies on the Latin liturgy of Jerusalem, pilgrimage accounts, and William of Tyre’s A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea. As a pre-Christian prophet of not just Christ, but also the Last Roman Emperor, who would defeat Gog and Magog and unite east and west, the Sibyl’s appearance inside the Nativity church speaks to, I argue, the eschatological framework of King Amalric’s reign. Furthermore, I contend that the Sibyl opens up space to reevaluate the relationship between Jerusalem and Constantinople which, in the 1160s, has been characterized as collaborative and harmonious. Instead, I suggest the possibility of contest and polemic; that in the image’s casting of King Amalric as the Last Roman Emperor, in the triumphant medium of glittering gold, the Jerusalem king challenged the Byzantine emperor’s own claim to such a leading role in the victorious narrative of Christian salvific history.
Ana C. Núñez is a PhD candidate in Medieval History at Stanford University. She majored in Late Antique-Medieval Studies at Pomona College in California (2017) and completed an MPhil in Medieval History at the University of Cambridge (2018). Her dissertation will look at rulership, eschatology, and twelfth-century reform in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, with a particular focus on the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Amanda Charland (University of Glasgow): The Power of Spoliation in Crusader-era Ascalon.
This paper demonstrates the complex role of spoliated elements and how they offer broader insight into medieval political thought. The city walls of Fatimid and Frankish Ascalon incorporate a multitude of reused architectural elements. The Fatimids incorporated Roman columns into the construction of the city’s defences. A Fatimid inscription, dating to 1050 CE, commemorates the building of one of Ascalon’s Fatimid towers. This inscription was reused by the Franks during the city’s reconstruction from 1239–1241. Using Ascalon as a case study, this paper offers a wide-ranging contextual discussion of the city walls by analysing the spoliated elements including their materiality, colour, apotropaic power, and their association with prominent architectural features within the walls. Contemporary architectural evidence and primary source information is also examined. Using the theoretical concepts of biography and memory to understand the life of spoliated objects prior, during, and post reuse; the motivation for the act of spoliation; and the mnemonic properties associated with the objects, the spoliated elements unveil a broader insight into the use and function of the architecture which incorporates these reused objects. In the case of Ascalon, the spoliated elements demonstrate different notions of power. The Fatimids harnessed the apotropaic power of Roman columns to further fortify the city’s walls both physically and intangibly; and the Franks reused a Fatimid inscription to display Christian power over the Muslim walls.
Dr Amanda Charland received her doctorate in Archaeology from the University of Glasgow in 2014. During her doctoral research, Amanda travelled to Israel to survey and to study the ruins of Crusader-era city walls. Her particular interest lies in the interaction between different groups of people and how they alter walls through destruction, reconstruction, incorporation, ornamentation, or new construction. Other research highlights include: exploring the function of Cyprus’s Frankish castles; surveying and excavating Second World War aircraft wreckage in Scotland’s Highlands and Islands; and exploring the history of the University of Glasgow’s 19th and 20th century architecture. Amanda has co-authored a book with the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States. The book investigates the life of
a Pennsylvania farm from colonial times to the present. Presently, Amanda serves as an Affiliated Researcher with Temple University’s “Honor to the Soldier and Sailor Everywhere” Project, which is developing an administrative and legislative history of battlefield preservation in the US Federal Government.
Amichay Schwartz (University of Bar-Ilan): The Borders of the Holy Land as Represented in a Medieval Hebrew Map.
Medieval Jewish scholars have dealt with the borders of the Holy Land due to the heightened significance and legal implications of defining the land's sanctity. The first Hebrew map was created by Rashi, the well-known Jewish exegete of the 11th century (died 1105), and thereafter this genre became common. One variant of Rashi's map was appended to a 14th century treatise titled 'Kaftor Vaferach'. This book was written by Ashtori Ha-Parḥi, a Provencal Jew from Montpellier, born circa 1280. Exiled from France in 1306, he journeyed to Barcelona, and finally immigrated to the Holy Land. Between 1314 and 1322, he authored this book that focuses on the domains of Jewish law pertaining to the Land of Israel. In doing so, Ashtori determined the borders of the Holy Land and described its Biblical sites and towns, locating then in each tribe’s territory. The afore-mentioned map was appended to a manuscript dated 1542 (MS Milano B 76 Sup, fol. 452). This manuscript has not received sufficient attention in scholarly research. This paper intends to examine different aspects and characteristics of this map, e.g. borders and locations. The paper will demonstrate the influence of Ashtori's treatise as shown in the map and will propose that missing paragraphs from the treatise can be reconstructed when taking the map into account.
3.2 Women and Crusader Identity
Chair: Natasha Hodgson (Nottingham Trent University)
Thomas Morin (Saint Louis University): Once One of Them: Women and Identity Formation in Latin Syria, the Case of the Gibelet Family, 1109-1300.
By utilizing chronicle evidence from Les Gestes des Chiprois, as well as material evidence such as lead seals, this article applies semiotic analysis and concepts of gender, identity, and memory to examine the Latins of Outremer as a distinct cultural group in the Levant, as well as the forces which shaped their relationships with other local populations and crusaders from western Europe. Focusing on the Lords of Gibelet (modern Jubail) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a case study, this article argues that women played a pivotal role in shaping a distinct cultural identity in Latin Syria, and that this carried with it important cultural and political ramifications which affected that region’s development. Additionally, the memory of kinship ties to western Europe continued to serve a unique strategic function among the descendants of Latin Settlers and was reactivated or reimagined for that purpose in the thirteenth century.
Thomas P. Morin is a third-year PhD candidate at Saint Louis University. His PhD advisor is Thomas F. Madden.
Paula Hailstone (Royal Holloway, University of London) ‘Blood is thicker than water’: Re-evaluating Hauteville Family Relations and Matrimonial Diplomacy in Relation to the First Crusade.
Marriage was a means of creating alliances and family networks, both at home and across borders. But it could also result in tensions, particularly if one partner was displaced by a ‘newer model’, to use modern parlance. Whilst the impact of matrimonial diplomacy in regard to Bohemond’s position in southern Italy, and then to the status both he and Tancred accrued through their own marriages, is often highlighted, less attention has been given to the significance of their wider familial links. As this paper will discuss, family connections may have helped shape Bohemond’s relationships with both Robert of Flanders and Raymond of Toulouse on the First Crusade. It will then consider the oft-held assumption that, because the Hautevilles were often at loggerheads over land and power in southern Italy, they did not share a common family identity beyond their own territories. Through an examination of the marriages of Count Roger of Sicily’s daughters, particularly that of one (sadly unnamed) to King Coloman of Hungary, this paper will argue that marital diplomacy reflected a broader familial – and political - agenda than previously acknowledged.
Paula was awarded her PhD at RHUL in April 2019. This was completed under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Phillips, with the thesis entitled: What was the relationship between Southern Italy and Sicily, Crusading and the Crusader States, c. 1060-1198? (Examiners: Dr Natasha Hodgson and Dr Paul Oldfield) In December 2019, it was published as Recalcitrant Crusaders? The Relationship Between Southern Italy and Sicily, Crusading and the Crusader States, c. 1060-1198, by Routledge, in the Advances in Crusades Research series. She is now an independent researcher, currently working on queens and queenship in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily.
Chair: Natasha Hodgson (Nottingham Trent University)
Thomas Morin (Saint Louis University): Once One of Them: Women and Identity Formation in Latin Syria, the Case of the Gibelet Family, 1109-1300.
By utilizing chronicle evidence from Les Gestes des Chiprois, as well as material evidence such as lead seals, this article applies semiotic analysis and concepts of gender, identity, and memory to examine the Latins of Outremer as a distinct cultural group in the Levant, as well as the forces which shaped their relationships with other local populations and crusaders from western Europe. Focusing on the Lords of Gibelet (modern Jubail) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a case study, this article argues that women played a pivotal role in shaping a distinct cultural identity in Latin Syria, and that this carried with it important cultural and political ramifications which affected that region’s development. Additionally, the memory of kinship ties to western Europe continued to serve a unique strategic function among the descendants of Latin Settlers and was reactivated or reimagined for that purpose in the thirteenth century.
Thomas P. Morin is a third-year PhD candidate at Saint Louis University. His PhD advisor is Thomas F. Madden.
Paula Hailstone (Royal Holloway, University of London) ‘Blood is thicker than water’: Re-evaluating Hauteville Family Relations and Matrimonial Diplomacy in Relation to the First Crusade.
Marriage was a means of creating alliances and family networks, both at home and across borders. But it could also result in tensions, particularly if one partner was displaced by a ‘newer model’, to use modern parlance. Whilst the impact of matrimonial diplomacy in regard to Bohemond’s position in southern Italy, and then to the status both he and Tancred accrued through their own marriages, is often highlighted, less attention has been given to the significance of their wider familial links. As this paper will discuss, family connections may have helped shape Bohemond’s relationships with both Robert of Flanders and Raymond of Toulouse on the First Crusade. It will then consider the oft-held assumption that, because the Hautevilles were often at loggerheads over land and power in southern Italy, they did not share a common family identity beyond their own territories. Through an examination of the marriages of Count Roger of Sicily’s daughters, particularly that of one (sadly unnamed) to King Coloman of Hungary, this paper will argue that marital diplomacy reflected a broader familial – and political - agenda than previously acknowledged.
Paula was awarded her PhD at RHUL in April 2019. This was completed under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Phillips, with the thesis entitled: What was the relationship between Southern Italy and Sicily, Crusading and the Crusader States, c. 1060-1198? (Examiners: Dr Natasha Hodgson and Dr Paul Oldfield) In December 2019, it was published as Recalcitrant Crusaders? The Relationship Between Southern Italy and Sicily, Crusading and the Crusader States, c. 1060-1198, by Routledge, in the Advances in Crusades Research series. She is now an independent researcher, currently working on queens and queenship in the Norman Kingdom of Sicily.
3.3 Later Crusades, Panel 1
Chair: Norman Housley (University of Leicester)
Robin Shields (Royal Holloway, University of London): Ottoman Vassals and Crusading in the Fifteenth Century Balkans.
During the fifteenth century the Ottoman Sultanate utilised its system of vassalage to further its control in the Balkans. These vassals were subject to several terms including: payment of annual tribute to the Sultan (harac), providing military forces to support further conquests, and to the attend the Sultan’s Porte. Despite this, the Balkan lords were able to pursue their own independent economic and political relations without supervision from the Sultan. This loose system of vassalage could prove problematic, and there is evidence to suggest that these vassals attempted to undermine their suzerain. These include moving information from the Ottoman Porte to either the Kingdom of Hungary of Papal States often in exchange for monetary gain, and in hope that a crusade may utilise it against the Ottomans. A further example of their peripheral role in crusading can be seen from the mass rejection of Ottoman suzerainty by many of these lords in 1444. This coincided with both the Crusade of Varna and resignation of Murad II, and appear to have been an attempt to undermine the power of the Ottomans in the region. However, such a reading of these events may be flawed. This paper shall use the Tocco lords of Epiros, in particular Carlo II Tocco (1429-1448), to illustrate that the actions and motivations of the Balkan lords were more complex. The lords of this region were influenced by various diplomatic and political relationships and so to describe them as a ‘fifth column’ does not accurately portray their position during this period.
Charlotte Gauthier (Royal Holloway, University of London) ‘The furtheraunce of all chivalrie’: Edward IV and the Anglo-Hungarian Alliance.
One summer’s evening three Hungarian knights arrived in Calais. Making contact with an English herald, the three wrote to King Edward IV offering lavish gifts and proposing to hold a tournament at Canterbury for ‘the furtheraunce of all chivalrie’ and the delight of ladies at court. Could these men, ostensibly on pleasure bent, have also been on a mission from King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary as he tried to recruit western European knights to his banner in his struggle against the Ottomans? Hungary, positioned on the eastern flank of the Empire and across the Adriatic from the Kingdom of Naples, was a vital player in the continent-wide system of alliances engineered by Edward IV and Charles the Bold of Burgundy. However, England’s diplomatic and military ties with Hungary, substantial as they were, have been little explored by scholars outside of eastern Europe. This paper charts the shifting pattern of Anglo-Hungarian relations under Edward IV, furthering our understanding of England’s crusading links with continental Europe in the late fifteenth century.
Charlotte Gauthier is a doctoral researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London, supervised by Professor Jonathan Harris. Her thesis, 'Crusading on the Eve of the Reformation: The Making of Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval England', explores the ecclesiastical, political, and cultural history of English crusading from the accession of Henry VI to the death of Henry VIII.
Miguel Ángel Arrondo (University of Navarra): Navarrese Hospitallers in Rhodes 1435-87.
The 15th century in the History of the Hospitaller Order of St John is an era of modernization and centralization in its structure and the administration. From the previous century, the Order of Rhodes had been beset by chronical financial problems and the advance of the Mamluk and the Ottoman Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean, whose attacks on the Hospitaller position in 1444 and 1480 were barely repelled. The central institutions of the order sought to mend the dire situation by increasing the control on the Hospitaller European Priories, of which a very important part was the supervision and the participation in the creation of the ruling elites for the Western Priories. By securing that a stay in the central convent could be an important part of a Hospitaller’s career the Master and Convent sought to make the interests of the Western commanders converge to those of Rhodes. This era of centralization overlaps in the Spanish Hospitaller Priory of Navarre with the long rule as prior of John de Beaumont. For his 52 years in office the Order’s documents held in the National Library of Malta record information of several Navarrese Hospitallers who lived in Rhodes periodically. By collating that information with the documents kept in the the Priory we can reconstruct the trajectory of these individual people and analyze how their stay in Rhodes influenced and shaped their trajectory within the Order. This way we can learn about how this Spanish Priory redirected its human and material resources to align with the interests of the central institutions while coping with the complex and tense political situation of the Kingdom of Navarre and the changing world of the Late Middle Ages.
Miguel Ángel Arrondo is a Third Year PhD student in the Department of History, History of Art and Geography of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the University of Navarra. His formation includes a Degree in History and a Master in Secondary Educationby the same University of Navarra. His PhD project under the name of "The Order of the Hospital of St. John in Navarre under prior Juan de Beaumont (1435-1487)" is being funded by a Scholarship of the Spanish Ministry of Universities named "Ayuda para la Formación del Profesorado Universitario (FPU)", in English "Scholarship for the Education of University Lecturers". From the 25 of February to the 20 of June of 2021 he conducted a Research Internship in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts of the University of Malta, in order to research the records of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem kept in the National Library of Malta.
Chair: Norman Housley (University of Leicester)
Robin Shields (Royal Holloway, University of London): Ottoman Vassals and Crusading in the Fifteenth Century Balkans.
During the fifteenth century the Ottoman Sultanate utilised its system of vassalage to further its control in the Balkans. These vassals were subject to several terms including: payment of annual tribute to the Sultan (harac), providing military forces to support further conquests, and to the attend the Sultan’s Porte. Despite this, the Balkan lords were able to pursue their own independent economic and political relations without supervision from the Sultan. This loose system of vassalage could prove problematic, and there is evidence to suggest that these vassals attempted to undermine their suzerain. These include moving information from the Ottoman Porte to either the Kingdom of Hungary of Papal States often in exchange for monetary gain, and in hope that a crusade may utilise it against the Ottomans. A further example of their peripheral role in crusading can be seen from the mass rejection of Ottoman suzerainty by many of these lords in 1444. This coincided with both the Crusade of Varna and resignation of Murad II, and appear to have been an attempt to undermine the power of the Ottomans in the region. However, such a reading of these events may be flawed. This paper shall use the Tocco lords of Epiros, in particular Carlo II Tocco (1429-1448), to illustrate that the actions and motivations of the Balkan lords were more complex. The lords of this region were influenced by various diplomatic and political relationships and so to describe them as a ‘fifth column’ does not accurately portray their position during this period.
Charlotte Gauthier (Royal Holloway, University of London) ‘The furtheraunce of all chivalrie’: Edward IV and the Anglo-Hungarian Alliance.
One summer’s evening three Hungarian knights arrived in Calais. Making contact with an English herald, the three wrote to King Edward IV offering lavish gifts and proposing to hold a tournament at Canterbury for ‘the furtheraunce of all chivalrie’ and the delight of ladies at court. Could these men, ostensibly on pleasure bent, have also been on a mission from King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary as he tried to recruit western European knights to his banner in his struggle against the Ottomans? Hungary, positioned on the eastern flank of the Empire and across the Adriatic from the Kingdom of Naples, was a vital player in the continent-wide system of alliances engineered by Edward IV and Charles the Bold of Burgundy. However, England’s diplomatic and military ties with Hungary, substantial as they were, have been little explored by scholars outside of eastern Europe. This paper charts the shifting pattern of Anglo-Hungarian relations under Edward IV, furthering our understanding of England’s crusading links with continental Europe in the late fifteenth century.
Charlotte Gauthier is a doctoral researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London, supervised by Professor Jonathan Harris. Her thesis, 'Crusading on the Eve of the Reformation: The Making of Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval England', explores the ecclesiastical, political, and cultural history of English crusading from the accession of Henry VI to the death of Henry VIII.
Miguel Ángel Arrondo (University of Navarra): Navarrese Hospitallers in Rhodes 1435-87.
The 15th century in the History of the Hospitaller Order of St John is an era of modernization and centralization in its structure and the administration. From the previous century, the Order of Rhodes had been beset by chronical financial problems and the advance of the Mamluk and the Ottoman Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean, whose attacks on the Hospitaller position in 1444 and 1480 were barely repelled. The central institutions of the order sought to mend the dire situation by increasing the control on the Hospitaller European Priories, of which a very important part was the supervision and the participation in the creation of the ruling elites for the Western Priories. By securing that a stay in the central convent could be an important part of a Hospitaller’s career the Master and Convent sought to make the interests of the Western commanders converge to those of Rhodes. This era of centralization overlaps in the Spanish Hospitaller Priory of Navarre with the long rule as prior of John de Beaumont. For his 52 years in office the Order’s documents held in the National Library of Malta record information of several Navarrese Hospitallers who lived in Rhodes periodically. By collating that information with the documents kept in the the Priory we can reconstruct the trajectory of these individual people and analyze how their stay in Rhodes influenced and shaped their trajectory within the Order. This way we can learn about how this Spanish Priory redirected its human and material resources to align with the interests of the central institutions while coping with the complex and tense political situation of the Kingdom of Navarre and the changing world of the Late Middle Ages.
Miguel Ángel Arrondo is a Third Year PhD student in the Department of History, History of Art and Geography of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the University of Navarra. His formation includes a Degree in History and a Master in Secondary Educationby the same University of Navarra. His PhD project under the name of "The Order of the Hospital of St. John in Navarre under prior Juan de Beaumont (1435-1487)" is being funded by a Scholarship of the Spanish Ministry of Universities named "Ayuda para la Formación del Profesorado Universitario (FPU)", in English "Scholarship for the Education of University Lecturers". From the 25 of February to the 20 of June of 2021 he conducted a Research Internship in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts of the University of Malta, in order to research the records of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem kept in the National Library of Malta.
3.4 Race, Ethnicity and Identity
Chair: Jonathan Harris (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Patrick Eickman (Marquette University): Coding Gog and Magog: Visualizing Race in the Teutonic Order.
The stark image of a medieval battle between German crusaders and their foreign opponents, differentiated by their coned helmets and strange shields, decorates the hardcover edition of William Urban’s 2003 The Teutonic Knights: A Military History. In this work, Urban employed written sources such as the Chronicon terrae Prussiae and the Livländische Reimchronik to discuss positive interactions between the knight-brothers and their Baltic subjects. For Urban, and for much of the German historiography of the Baltic Crusades, the Deutschordensstaat (The State of the Teutonic Order) was not a racial state but the foundation for a medieval pax baltica. However, the image utilized in Urban’s book for decoration provides a different perspective on the relationship between indigenous Baltic peoples and the Teutonic Knights. While a footnote in The Teutonic Knights labeled the forces opposing the German crusaders as “eastern warriors,” they are in fact the devilish forces of Gog and Magog in Heinrich von Hesler’s Apokalypse. This paper argues that by coding monstrous entities such as Gog and Magog as pagan Balts, the illuminated copies of Heinrich’s Apokalypse racialized Baltic peoples as a bio-religious other, unable to integrate fully into Christendom. By understanding the images within Heinrich von Hesler’s Apokalypse through the lens of race, one can better understand how the Teutonic Knights imagined their crusade as a necessary act of corrective violence.
Patrick Eickman is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research currently centers on the sentimental practices and literature of the Teutonic Knights during the Middle Ages. Scholarship on the emotional turn and the Baltic Crusades frames his project. Patrick is particularly interested in how medieval ideas about emotions could essentialize Baltic peoples and how the Teutonic Order’s chroniclers constructed emotional communities that incorporated both monastic and chivalric ideas.
Graham Abney (University of New Mexico): Diplomacy with a Phantom: Interactions between Fifth Crusaders and the Imaginary Prester John.
As the Latin army of the Fifth Crusade decamped from Damietta and made its soon-to-be-catastrophic march towards Cairo in the summer of 1221, Church leaders of the army were confident they were performing their role in a divinely-ordained stratagem, one plotted in conjunction with a Christian ruler that never existed: Prester John. Though rarely a focus in historiography, scholars often treat this earnest crusader belief in Prester John with contempt. Hans Eberhard Mayer criticizes the “pigheadedness” of the papal legate Pelagius of Albano for believing in the existence of Prester John, Igor de Rachewiltz expresses incredulity that said belief could be taken “so seriously,” and Geraldine Heng reduces crusader belief in Prester John to nothing more than a mere “hope.” But, as the writings of James of Vitry and Oliver of Paderborn demonstrate, the crusaders developed a deeply considered belief in the legendary Prester John as a consequence of something they considered quite mundane: though Prester John never existed, crusade leadership engaged in a three-year long pseudo-diplomatic relationship with him. The crusaders, in fact, reinterpreted day-to-day interactions with natives of the Near East to fit a preexisting diplomatic paradigm. Thus, they believed they were exchanging correspondence with Prester John, receiving envoys sent by the pontiff-king into the crusader camp, and coordinating military strategy with him. In 1221, it was the accumulated evidence gleaned from these pseudo-diplomatic interactions—not the stubborn “pigheadedness” of Pelagius or a fantastical “hope” of the crusaders—that propelled the army towards Cairo.
Graham Abney holds an M.A. in History from the University of New Mexico, earning distinction for his thesis advised by Michael A. Ryan and entitled “Sundiata Keita’s Invention of Latin Purgatory: The West African Gold Trade’s Influence on Western European Society (ca. 1050-1350).” Graham’s research interests include high and later medieval Latin interaction with, and perceptions of, sub-Saharan Africans and Africa, world systems, and Prester John.
Jonathan Wright (University of New Mexico): Apocalyptic Persecution: A Shared Identity between Protestantism in the French Wars of Religion and Catharism in the Albigensian Crusade.
Finding similarities between a peripheral dualist Cathar heresy in the Languedoc region in southern France with the more prevalent Protestant faith seems theologically and logistically problematic. However, through the lens of apocalypticism in the art, literature, and historiography that followed the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) and the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), a collective spirit of identity surrounding an apocalyptic level of persecution defined Cathar and Protestant experiences in France. During a time of crisis in the sixteenth century, confessional propaganda latched onto genealogical links between Protestantism and Catharism to cement the roots of the new Protestant faith in France founded on persecution. The apocalyptic levels of violence and persecution manifested itself in martyrologies as massacres of entire cities in the Crusade were compared to the nationwide extermination of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. Moving from comparable events and individuals in the Crusade and the Wars to a more symbolic approach to Protestant and Catholic historiographical developments, this paper will highlight how fearful early modern authors created an identity based on apocalyptic crusading persecution. These attempts would range from broadside, ephemeral propaganda to direct advice to the French king as rewritten histories of the Albigensian Crusade were published during the apocalyptic anxiety in France brought on by the Wars. By thinking about medieval apocalyptic histories in an early modern context, a collective identity between Catharism and Protestantism emerged from the violence of the Albigensian Crusade and the destruction of the French Wars of Religion.
Jonathan Wright is a history graduate from the University of New Mexico, United States. He is interested in religious and cultural exchanges in France between the medieval and early modern eras and how they changed over time. Trained as a social researcher with data analysis, his work focuses on the apocalypse in the literature and art of the Albigensian Crusade and the construction of heretical identities in southern France that resurfaced in the French Wars of Religion. Also interested in local histories in Leeds, UK and New Mexico, US, he has just presented work on water in the Redefining the Middle Ages conference at the University of New Mexico.
Chair: Jonathan Harris (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Patrick Eickman (Marquette University): Coding Gog and Magog: Visualizing Race in the Teutonic Order.
The stark image of a medieval battle between German crusaders and their foreign opponents, differentiated by their coned helmets and strange shields, decorates the hardcover edition of William Urban’s 2003 The Teutonic Knights: A Military History. In this work, Urban employed written sources such as the Chronicon terrae Prussiae and the Livländische Reimchronik to discuss positive interactions between the knight-brothers and their Baltic subjects. For Urban, and for much of the German historiography of the Baltic Crusades, the Deutschordensstaat (The State of the Teutonic Order) was not a racial state but the foundation for a medieval pax baltica. However, the image utilized in Urban’s book for decoration provides a different perspective on the relationship between indigenous Baltic peoples and the Teutonic Knights. While a footnote in The Teutonic Knights labeled the forces opposing the German crusaders as “eastern warriors,” they are in fact the devilish forces of Gog and Magog in Heinrich von Hesler’s Apokalypse. This paper argues that by coding monstrous entities such as Gog and Magog as pagan Balts, the illuminated copies of Heinrich’s Apokalypse racialized Baltic peoples as a bio-religious other, unable to integrate fully into Christendom. By understanding the images within Heinrich von Hesler’s Apokalypse through the lens of race, one can better understand how the Teutonic Knights imagined their crusade as a necessary act of corrective violence.
Patrick Eickman is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research currently centers on the sentimental practices and literature of the Teutonic Knights during the Middle Ages. Scholarship on the emotional turn and the Baltic Crusades frames his project. Patrick is particularly interested in how medieval ideas about emotions could essentialize Baltic peoples and how the Teutonic Order’s chroniclers constructed emotional communities that incorporated both monastic and chivalric ideas.
Graham Abney (University of New Mexico): Diplomacy with a Phantom: Interactions between Fifth Crusaders and the Imaginary Prester John.
As the Latin army of the Fifth Crusade decamped from Damietta and made its soon-to-be-catastrophic march towards Cairo in the summer of 1221, Church leaders of the army were confident they were performing their role in a divinely-ordained stratagem, one plotted in conjunction with a Christian ruler that never existed: Prester John. Though rarely a focus in historiography, scholars often treat this earnest crusader belief in Prester John with contempt. Hans Eberhard Mayer criticizes the “pigheadedness” of the papal legate Pelagius of Albano for believing in the existence of Prester John, Igor de Rachewiltz expresses incredulity that said belief could be taken “so seriously,” and Geraldine Heng reduces crusader belief in Prester John to nothing more than a mere “hope.” But, as the writings of James of Vitry and Oliver of Paderborn demonstrate, the crusaders developed a deeply considered belief in the legendary Prester John as a consequence of something they considered quite mundane: though Prester John never existed, crusade leadership engaged in a three-year long pseudo-diplomatic relationship with him. The crusaders, in fact, reinterpreted day-to-day interactions with natives of the Near East to fit a preexisting diplomatic paradigm. Thus, they believed they were exchanging correspondence with Prester John, receiving envoys sent by the pontiff-king into the crusader camp, and coordinating military strategy with him. In 1221, it was the accumulated evidence gleaned from these pseudo-diplomatic interactions—not the stubborn “pigheadedness” of Pelagius or a fantastical “hope” of the crusaders—that propelled the army towards Cairo.
Graham Abney holds an M.A. in History from the University of New Mexico, earning distinction for his thesis advised by Michael A. Ryan and entitled “Sundiata Keita’s Invention of Latin Purgatory: The West African Gold Trade’s Influence on Western European Society (ca. 1050-1350).” Graham’s research interests include high and later medieval Latin interaction with, and perceptions of, sub-Saharan Africans and Africa, world systems, and Prester John.
Jonathan Wright (University of New Mexico): Apocalyptic Persecution: A Shared Identity between Protestantism in the French Wars of Religion and Catharism in the Albigensian Crusade.
Finding similarities between a peripheral dualist Cathar heresy in the Languedoc region in southern France with the more prevalent Protestant faith seems theologically and logistically problematic. However, through the lens of apocalypticism in the art, literature, and historiography that followed the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) and the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), a collective spirit of identity surrounding an apocalyptic level of persecution defined Cathar and Protestant experiences in France. During a time of crisis in the sixteenth century, confessional propaganda latched onto genealogical links between Protestantism and Catharism to cement the roots of the new Protestant faith in France founded on persecution. The apocalyptic levels of violence and persecution manifested itself in martyrologies as massacres of entire cities in the Crusade were compared to the nationwide extermination of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. Moving from comparable events and individuals in the Crusade and the Wars to a more symbolic approach to Protestant and Catholic historiographical developments, this paper will highlight how fearful early modern authors created an identity based on apocalyptic crusading persecution. These attempts would range from broadside, ephemeral propaganda to direct advice to the French king as rewritten histories of the Albigensian Crusade were published during the apocalyptic anxiety in France brought on by the Wars. By thinking about medieval apocalyptic histories in an early modern context, a collective identity between Catharism and Protestantism emerged from the violence of the Albigensian Crusade and the destruction of the French Wars of Religion.
Jonathan Wright is a history graduate from the University of New Mexico, United States. He is interested in religious and cultural exchanges in France between the medieval and early modern eras and how they changed over time. Trained as a social researcher with data analysis, his work focuses on the apocalypse in the literature and art of the Albigensian Crusade and the construction of heretical identities in southern France that resurfaced in the French Wars of Religion. Also interested in local histories in Leeds, UK and New Mexico, US, he has just presented work on water in the Redefining the Middle Ages conference at the University of New Mexico.