Description
Book SynopsisAnalyzes how chroniclers of the First Crusade attempted to represent the enterprise as a "holy war." Focuses on accounts of miracles, especially the intervention of saints in the battle of Antioch; explores how the chroniclers related the crusade to biblical events.
Trade Review“Taking as a leitmotif a celebrated moment from the narratives of the First Crusade—the appearance of an army of saints during the siege of Antioch—Elizabeth Lapina gradually builds an original and convincing interpretation of crusader psychology and historiography. Her contribution to our understanding of the part played by the Normans in the development of crusade ideology is especially groundbreaking. This is an important and innovative work that is also, from start to finish, a delight to read.”
—Jay Rubenstein,University of Tennessee
“Students and scholars will be very well served by Lapina’s careful attention to detail and placement of the crusader tales of miraculous battlefield interventions within a wider context.”
—Choice
“This is an impressive piece of work that brings a new level of understanding to our knowledge of the Crusade chronicles. It is impeccably researched and demonstrates a close attention to detail. There are moments of real originality and many insightful observations. Lapina founds her conclusions upon a strongly rooted base of contextual research which allows her to identify moments when the chronicles were drawing upon deep veins of received wisdom dating back to antiquity, and also occasions when they were advancing ideas that were fundamentally new.”
—Nicholas Morton The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture
“Whether undergraduates or more advanced researchers, all those studying the First Crusade will very much benefit from this book and I, for one, will read these sources with new eyes having benefited from Lapina’s new perspectives.”
—Conor Kostick Renaissance Quarterly
“This is an excellent and rigorous study of what many would see as a niche group of texts. As Lapina has shown, however, these texts were nothing less than medieval efforts to understand the meaning of the crusade. As such, they connected with much more than the events they purported to describe.”
—Megan Cassidy-Welch Parergon
“Lapina takes a fresh look at how the events in Antioch were reported in chronicles (those written by participants in the Crusades and those created by stay-at-home writers in Western Europe immediately afterwards) and chansons de geste.”
—Brian G. H. Ditcham Sixteenth Century Journal
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Eyewitnesses of Miracles
2 Supernatural Interventions in the Battle of Antioch: The Origins
3 Hostile Appropriations of Byzantine Saints by the Normans of the South
4 The Normans of the South: From Scourge of God to Chosen People
5 Judas Maccabeus: A Jewish Warrior, a Christian Patriarch, and a Muslim General
6 “The West Prepares to Illuminate the East”
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
