Suchergebnisse

Introduction / Conor Kostick -- 1. Warfare in the Mediterranean region in the age of the crusades, 1095-1291 : a clash of contrasts / John France -- 2. Muslim responses to the Frankish domination in the Near East, 1098-1291 / Yehoshua Frenkel -- 3. On the margins of Christendom : the impact of the crusades on Byzantium / Chris Wright -- 4. Conflict and cohabitation : marriage and diplomacy between Latins and Cilician Armenians, c.1097-1253 / Natasha Hodgson -- 5. National identity, language and conflict in the crusades to the Holy Land, 1096-1192 / Alan V. Murray -- 6. Inimicus Dei et sanctae Christianitatis? : Saracens and their Prophet in twelfth-century crusade propaganda and western travesties of Muhammad's life / Sini Kangas -- 7. The impact of the First Crusade on Western opinion towards the Byzantine Empire : the Dei Gesta per Francos of Guibert of Nogent and the Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres / Lean Ni Chleirigh -- 8. Oriental and occidental medicine in the crusader states / Susan B. Edgington -- 9. Architecture of the crusaders in the Holy Land : the first European colonial architecture? / Jurgen Kruger -- 10. Peacemaking : perceptions and practices in the medieval Latin East / Yvonne Friedman.

Previous surveys of medieval thinking with regard to courage and cowardice have concluded that the greatest opprobrium was reserved for those knights who turned and fled from battle. A close examination of the many sources for the First Crusade, however, indicates that such battlefield behaviour was far less of an issue than that of desertion from the campaign. There is no comparison between the anger and violent expression of dismay directed towards those who abandoned the crusade and that levelled at those who fled from fighting. What this suggests is that the all-or-nothing nature of the enterprise, once it was far from Christian territories, combined with a theology that equated leaving the army with the violation of a pilgrim's oath, altered the participant's concept of cowardice. Leaving the crusade was the highest form of cowardice and all other displays of fear were relatively excusable.

The epitome of the medieval warrior, the hero of the chanson , the glorious competitor in the sports of the tournament, was the iuvenis : a knight not necessarily 'young' in age, but rather, young in his career. When the early medieval historians of the First Crusade (1096–1099) are read with regard to their use of this term, it becomes clear that they saw a distinct grouping of iuvenes as being present on the crusade. These knights, despite a certain recklessness and indiscipline, were portrayed as playing an important military role in the Christian army.