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From the late eleventh to the early fourteenth century, western Europeans established the crusader states of the Levant and had unprecedented commercial, cultural, and military exchanges with the Middle East. Through a focused analysis of fifty objects, this book examines what material culture can tell us about interpersonal, interfaith, cross-cultural, and trans-regional encounters during this period of the medieval crusades.
This richly illustrated volume explores Latin Christian, Eastern Christian, Muslim, and Jewish objects, reflecting the variety of artifacts surviving from this period and region, including sculpture, glassware, metalware, manuscripts, textiles, painting, coins, and seals. Addressing the themes of Belief, Conflict, Exchange, Power, and Memory, the essays examine the encounters of each object with its environments throughout its history to show the richness and multiplicities of material culture and perspectives in the Middle Ages, which lead to the complexities of the region today.
The book stands as a valuable resource for students and scholars of the medieval crusades, the medieval Middle East and Europe, as well as all those interested in archaeology, art history, global history and religious studies more broadly.
List of contents
List of IllustrationsIntroduction
I.Belief
- Cross
- Yeshiva capital
- Icon of St. Sergius and female donor
- Qur'an of Nur al-Din
- Painted fragment of an angel from Gethsemane
- Reliquary of St. Marina
- Altar from 'Atlit Castle
- Candlesticks from Church of the Nativity
- Icon of the Nativity and Adoration of the Magi
- Syriac lectionary
II. Conflict
- Aleppo Codex
- Slab with Coats of arms over a Fatimid inscription
- Cairo Genizah fragment
- Jerusalem pilaster
- Sword
- D'Arenberg Basin
- Game board
- Gospels of T'oros Roslin
- Templar seal
- Bell from Acre
III. Exchange
- Imitation dinar
- Sugar mold
- Panel of a Holy Sepulcher reliquary
- Buttons
- Dagger with scabbard
- Drinking cup
- Albarello
- Arsenal Old Testament
- Windowpane fragment
- Freer Canteen
IV. Power
- Front cover of Psalter of Queen Melisende
- Map of Jerusalem
- Seal cast of Hospitaller master
- Carved head of a knight
- Denier from Amalric I
- Miter of James of Vitry
- Stone matrix
- Jamb capital
- Legal document
- Heraldic shield relief
V. Memory
- Cadouin shroud
- Pilgrim's flask
- Minbar of Nur al-Din/Saladin
- Tomb of Baldwin V fragment
- Seal matrix of Nachmanides
- Pair of glass beakers
- Histoire d'Outremer (History of Deeds done Beyond the Sea)
- Epitaph stone of Isabel de Hana
- Grandson Antependium
- View of Acre from the Cocharelli Codex
Index
About the author
Cathleen A. Fleck is Professor of Art History and Director of the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri Columbia. She has published articles and monographs on the court art of Naples and Avignon and representations of Jerusalem in the crusader era of the Middle Ages (c. 1187-1356).
is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Her main interest is in perceptions and representations - textual and visual - of the crusading movement in the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, on which she has published widely.
Richard A. Leson is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research and publications focus on the art and architectural patronage of elite French families, with a special emphasis on heraldry. He is currently writing about the life and artistic patronage of Jeanne of Flanders (ca. 1272-1333)
Vardit Ruth Shotten is an architect and archaeologist working in the Archaeological Research Department, Israel Antiquities Authority, whose research and writing focuses on medieval architecture, particularly in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. She is currently leading the research project on 'Atlit Castle and teaches at the University of Haifa.
