This collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.

This collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.

The period between the First Crusade and the collapse of the "crusader states" in the eastern Mediterranean was a crucial one for medieval historical writing. From the departure of the earliest crusading armies in 1096 to the Mamlūk conquest of the Latin states in the late thirteenth century, crusading activity, and the settlements it established and aimed to protect, generated a vast textual output, offering rich insights into the historiographical cultures of the Latin West and Latin East. However, modern scholarship on the crusades and the "crusader states" has tended to draw an artificial boundary between the two, even though medieval writers treated their histories as virtually indistinguishable.

This volume places these spheres into dialogue with each other, looking at how individual crusading campaigns and the Frankish settlements in the eastern Mediterranean were depicted and remembered in the central Middle Ages. Its essays cover a geographical range that incorporates England, France, Germany, southern Italy and the Holy Land, and address such topics as gender, emotion, the natural world, crusading as an institution, origin myths, textual reception, forms of storytelling and historical genre. Bringing to the foreground neglected sources, methodologies, events and regions of textual production, the collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.

The Crusades, the Latin East and Medieval History-Writing: An Introduction
Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer

1. History-Writing and Remembrance in Crusade LettersThomas W. Smith
2. A 'swiðe mycel styrung': The First Crusade in Early Vernacular Annals from Anglo-Norman EnglandJames H. Kane
3. To Bargain with God: The Crusade Vow in the Narratives of the First CrusadeEdward J. Caddy
4. 'The Lord has brought eastern riches before you': Battlefield Spoils and Looted Treasure in Narratives of the First CrusadeConnor C. Wilson
5. Foundation and Settlement in Fulcher of Chartres'Historia Hierosolymitana: A Narratological ReadingKaty Mortimer
6. After Ascalon: 'Bartolf of Nangis', Fulcher of Chartres and the Early Years of the Kingdom of JerusalemSusan B. Edgington
7. Repurposing a Crusade Chronicle: Peter of Cornwall'sLiber Revelationum and the Reception of Fulcher of Chartres'Historia Hierosolymitana in Medieval EnglandStephen J. Spencer
8. BetweenChronicon andChanson: William of Tyre, the First Crusade and the Art of StorytellingAndrew D. Buck
9. History and Politics in the Latin East: William of Tyre and the Composition of theHistoria Hierosolymitana - Ivo Wolsing
10. 'When I became a man': Kingship and Masculinity in William of Tyre'sChronicon - Katherine J. Lewis
11. Laments for the Lost City: The Loss of Jerusalem in Western Historical WritingKatrine Funding Højgaard
12. The Silences of theItinerarium Peregrinorum 1Helen J. Nicholson
13. The Natural and Biblical Landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry'sHistoria Orientalis - Beth C. Spacey
14. The Masculine Experience and the Experience of Masculinity on the Seventh Crusade in John of Joinville'sVie de Saint Louis - Mark McCabe
15. Writing and Copying History at Acrec. 1230-91Peter Edbury

Index