Andrew Jotischky

Ethnic and Religious Categories in the Treatment of Jews and Muslims in the Crusader States

The tone for the treatment of Jews and Muslims by crusaders was set even before the First Crusade reached its destination. The departure of some groups of crusaders to the East in 1096 was preceded in some towns in Normandy and western parts of Germany—Rouen, Worms, Mainz and Cologne especially—by mob violence against settled Jewish communities.1 The capture of some cities in Syria and Palestine by the crusaders between 1098 and ca. 1110, moreover, was followed by massacres of Muslim (mostly Egyptian) defenders and civilian inhabitants. The most notorious case occurred in Jerusalem in July 1099, when a contemporary Frankish account, citing Apocalypse 14.20, spoke of blood rising as high as the knees of the horsemen and the bridles of their horses.2 None of these massacres appears to have fulfilled the intentions of the papacy in the preaching of the Crusade, and collectively they have been explained as examples of how crusading took on a momentum of its own in the hands of the participants.3 The First Crusade can thus be said to have marked a turning point in the treatment of Jews and Muslims. Prior to 1096, although outbreaks of violence against Jewish communities had occurred, there had been no systematic persecution of Jews within the Christian West, and there is little evidence of any interest in legal or theological discourses in singling them out for special treatment.4

Monastic Reform and the Geography of Christendom:Experience, Observation and Influence

Monastic reform is generally understood as a textually-driven process governed by a renewed interest in early monastic ideals and practices in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and focusing on the discourses of reformers about the Egyptian ‘desert fathers’ as the originators of monasticism. Historians have suggested that tropes about the desert, solitude etc drawn from early texts found their way into mainstream accounts of monastic change in the period ca.1080-1150 . This article challenges this model by proposing that considerations of ‘reform’ must take into account parallel movements in Greek Orthodox monasticism and interactions of practice between the two monastic environments. Three case studies of non-textually derived parallel practices are discussed, and the importance of the Holy Land as a source of inspiration for such practices is advanced in place of Egypt.

Manuel Comnenus and the Reunion of the Churches: the Evidence of the Conciliar Mosiacs in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem

Abstract The twelfth-century mosaics on the nave walls of the Church of the Nativity illustrating the ecumenical and selected provincial councils of the Church are here examined in the context of the negotiations for the reunion of the Latin, Byzantine and Armenian churches in the 1160s–1170s. The existence of this Byzantine cycle according to a strictly Byzantine iconography in a Latin cathedral may argue for a permanent Orthodox monastic community, and even an Orthodox bishop, in Bethlehem.

Greek Orthodox monasteries in the Holy Land and their liturgies in the period of the crusades

ABSTRACT The First Crusade and subsequent establishment of a Latin state and Latin Church hierarchy in Jerusalem was intended to liberate the Christian population of the Holy Land, most of them Greek Orthodox, from Seljuq rule, which was thought in the West to threaten Christian worship. Since the late tenth century, however, Greek monasteries in the Holy Land and Syria had been experiencing a revival which can be seen in the founding of new monasteries, the development of hagiographical and liturgical traditions, and intensive textual activity. This article explores the continued development of these forms in Greek monasteries under crusader rule (1099–1291), through an examination of the liturgical norms established by founders, and consideration of the types of manuscripts produced in their scriptoria. The relationship between newly revived Greek Orthodox monasticism and the Latin ecclesiastical hierarchy is considered through an examination of a manuscript of 1122 detailing the liturgy of the Easter Fire ritual.

Carmelites and Crusading in the Later Middle Ages

Although the Carmelite Order was founded in the Holy Land during a period when it was under western European rule (13th century), the Carmelites had to migrate back to western Europe after the fall of the Crusader States in 1291. This essay examines the ways in which the Carmelite in the fourteenth century continued to keep the Holy Land in the forefront of European thinking through deployment of supposedly historical texts relating to the Orders past and to the future of Christendom.

St Sabas and the Palestinian Monastic Network under Crusader Rule

This short article shows how continuity of practice in sites of Palestinian desert monasticism from the early Byzantine period to the period of crusader rule enabled the functioning of a network of monastic ideals across the eastern Mediterranean.

Gerard of Nazareth, John Bale and the Origins of the Carmelite Order

Describing the general condition of the Latin Church in Outremer in the 1220s, Jacques de Vitry enumerated, as examples of those who had chosen the religious life, the hermits of Mt Carmel: Others, following the example and imitation of the holy solitary Elijah the Prophet, live on Mt Carmel, especially on the part which overlooks the city of Porphyria, which today is called Cayphas [Haifa], near the spring which is called the spring of Elijah, and not far from the monastery of the Blessed Virgin Margaret. They lead a solitary life in small cells as in a hive; like the bees of the Lord they gather the honey of spiritual sweetness.