Anne E. Lester

A shared imitation: Cistercian convents and crusader families in thirteenth-century Champagne☆

This article examines the relationship between Cistercian nunneries and the crusade movement and considers the role of gender in light of the new emphasis on penitential piety and suffering prevalent during the thirteenth century. Focused on evidence from the region of Champagne in northern France, it argues that female family members of male crusaders adopted Cistercian spirituality as a means of participating in the experience of suffering and the pursuit of the imitation of Christ that had come to be associated with the act of crusading. The connection between Cistercian nuns and crusaders was further strengthened during this period as the Cistercian order expanded its liturgy to include specific rounds of prayers for success in the east and in southern France, for Jerusalem, and for the well-being of crusaders. Many crusader families in Champagne founded Cistercian nunneries to function as family necropolises, further sharpening the connections between crusaders, memory, and suffering as experienced in female Cistercian houses. ☆ The following abbreviations have been employed: GC: Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, 16 vols (Paris, 1715–1865); AASS: Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, ed. Jean Bollandus and others (Antwerp, 1643–present; new edn Paris and Brussels, 1868–1925) AD: Archives départementales; and BnF: Bibliothèque nationale de France. With respect to Latin citations from original archival sources I have silently expanded abbreviated words according to classical norms and followed modern principles of punctuation.

Memory and interpretation: new approaches to the study of the crusades

This article describes the connection between studies of memory and the history of the crusades. The authors argue that integrating memory into crusades scholarship offers new ways of exploring the aftermath of war, the construction of cultural memory, the role of women and families in this process, and the crusading movement itself. The article draws on and extends recent trends in crusade scholarship that understand the crusades as a broad religious movement that called upon and developed within a cultural framework that was wider than previously acknowledged. It examines the historical and theoretical development of memory studies and then outlines the recent historiography of crusading studies. The article then introduces a series of essays, which together examine the creation, communication and dissemination of crusade memory.

What remains: women, relics and remembrance in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade

After the fall of Constantinople to the Latin Crusaders in 1204 hundreds of relics were carried into the West as diplomatic gifts, memorabilia and tokens of victory. Yet many relics were also sent privately between male crusaders and their spouses and female kin. As recipients of relics women were often called upon to initiate new relic cults and practices of commemoration in honour of the men who sent these objects and who often never returned from the East. By considering the material quality of Fourth Crusade relics, this article argues that they were objects that exercised a profound effect on the lives of those receiving them, influencing their perceptions and actions, focusing practices of commemoration and ultimately shaping the memory of the crusade. Relics formed the scaffolding that recursively evoked a venerated martyr, a kinsman dead in the East, a familys crusading lineage, and broader ideas of religious sacrifice.

Center and Periphery

Center and Periphery honors Willliam Chester Jordan on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The essays by his former doctoral students examine the complexity of negotiating power at the center and margins of society in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean.