Expectations and Evaluation:
In concert with the goals of the course stated above, students will be expected to maintain a professional attitude toward their work, and to be active, courteous, and constructive in discussions.
It is expected that all students will appear promptly for the class meeting and prepared to discuss the assigned reading. All written assignments should be submitted in the format prescribed and in hard copy to the instructor on the date due. If students feel that they cannot submit assignments on the given date and need an extension they must contact the instructor well in advance of the due date.
In written assignments and in-class presentations, students will be evaluated on the depth and quality of their research and the clarity and strength of their arguments. Quality of scholarly prose, evidence of proofreading, and attention to detail will all be taken seriously. The instructor is happy to read drafts provided well in advance of the due date.
Open engagement with peers in class and with the instructor both inside and outside of the classroom will help to ensure that students get the most out of the course.
Basis for Evaluation:
(1) Presentation and discussion: 40%
(2) Short paper: 20%
(3) Research paper: 40%
Class Presentations
Over the course of the semester, each student must make one presentation on a topic agreed upon with the instructor. The presentations will be no longer than 10 minutes in duration, and should introduce the class to the subject at hand. Ultimately, the style and content of the presentation is at the students’ discretion, but all presentations must include a 2-sided handout including a brief annotated bibliography (5-7 items) relating to the topic. An annotated bibliography supplements bibliographical citations with brief descriptions of the principle argument of the work, making reference to notable aspects of methodology and source base. For the purposes of this assignment, annotations should not be more than 2-3 sentences. Presenters are responsible for making sure that copies of their handouts are available to all in the class.
Short paper 1: profile of a scholar (4-5 pages, due June 13)
The first written assignment is a short paper detailing the contributions of a scholar working in any field, but whose work relates in some way to the study of the crusades. The paper will provide information regarding the scholar’s intellectual formation, influences (implicit or explicit) and their trajectory in terms of published research (unpublished work, while not always available, may also be included). The paper will run 4-5 pages, not including complete bibliography.
Short paper 2: primary source exposition (4-5 pages, due June 22)
The second written assignment is a short paper offering a close examination of a primary source. The source can be a text, a building, or an artwork that has been used or could be used to better understand the crusades. The paper will present as much detail as possible about the source’s form with a brief consideration of the scholarship devoted to it and some suggestion of its utility in future research.
Final project: pedagogical resource (due at the end of the semester)
For the final project, students will prepare a pedagogical resource to help teachers at any level who want to teach on some aspect of the crusades. Topics should address fundamental questions, problems, or issues, and offer sources, materials, and suggestions for guiding a discussion of the topic. All projects will be mounted on the course website to collectively consitute a guide to teaching aspects of the crusades.
Matters of Style
All written assignments (with the exception of handouts) will be submitted in a tasteful 12-point font, double spaced with 1-inch margins, and should be paginated. Footnote citations and bibliographies should follow the Chicago Manual of Style.
Academic Integrity
Definitions of cheating and plagiarism and the university’s standards of academic integrity can be found at this link. Suspected violations of these standards will be investigated thoroughly. For further information about plagiarism see the AHA guide.
Course Books:
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History (3rd Edition) (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
Ambroise, The History of the Holy War Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, tr. Marianne Ailes (Boydell Press, 2011)
Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades, tr. Caroline Smith (London and New York, 2009)
Robert the Monk, Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Hierosolymitana (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2006)
Schedule of Class Meetings and Assignments
(texts available electronically on the course Blackboard page are marked) Any changes to the readings will be announced well in advance via email.
Week I: Origins
T May 30: Historiography and the Roots of the First Crusade
Readings:
Secondary Literature (to be read in the following order):
Giles Constable, "The Historiography of the Crusades" in Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century (Farnham, Surrey, 2008), pp. 3-43.
"Definitions and Directions," "Erdmann... the End of Tradition?" Extract from Christopher Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades (Manchester, 2011), pp. 182-192, 216-228.
Marcus Bull, "The Roots of Lay Enthusiasm for the First Crusade," History 78:254 (1993), 353-372
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders 1095-1131 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 81-105.
"Chapter 4: the Franks' Imagined Empire," in Matthew Gabriele, An Empire of Memory: the Legend of Charlemagne before the First Crusade (Oxford, 2011), pp. 98-127
Sources:
“German Pilgrimage of 1064-5,” in Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: a Reader in B. Whalen pp. 175-9.
“Bernold of Constance’s Description of the Council of Piacenza,” tr. Robert Somerville
[Charters of Departing Crusaders]
R Jun 1: The First Crusade: Event and Legacies
Readings:
Secondary Literature:
“Introduction,” in The Historia Hierosolimitana of Robert the Monk, ed. Damien Kempf and Marcus Bull (Woodbridge, 2013)
“Western Narratives of the First Crusade,” in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History (Leiden, 2009), vol. 3, pp. 15-25
Sources:
Robert the Monk, Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Hierosolymitana (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2006)
Week II: Varieties of Experience in Twelfth Century Crusading
T June 3: Pluralities of Experience
Readings:
Secondary literature:
Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven, 2007), chapters 3-4, pp. 37-79.
R.A. Fletcher, “Reconquest and Crusade in Spain c. 1050-1150,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th series 37 (1987), pp. 31-47.
Nicholas Paul, “The Fruits of Penitence and the Laurel of the Cross: the Poetics of Crusade and Reconquest in the Memorials of Santa Maria de Ripoll,” Crusading on the Edge: Ideas and Practice of Crusading in Iberia and the Baltic Region, 1100-1500, ed. Torben K. Nielsen and Iben Fonnesberg- Schmidt (Turnbout, 2016), pp. 245-273.
Nicholas Paul, “The Fabric of Victory,” in To Follow in Their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2012)
Jochen Schenk, “Chapter 1: Templar Families,” in Templar Families: Landowning Families and the Order of the Temple in France, c. 1120-1307 (Cambridge, 2012) [Ebook]
Sources:
Eugenius III, Quantum praedecessores
Chevalier, mult estes guariz
Marcabru, Vers del lavador
http://www.rialto.unina.it/Mbru/293.35%28Gaunt-Harvey-Paterson%29.htm
R June 5: Islam and the Crusades
Readings:
Secondary Literature:
Carole Hillenbrand, “Chapter 3: Jihad in the Period 493-569/1100-1174,” in The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburg, 1999), pp. 89-256.
Sources:
Ibn-Shaddad, Rare and Excellent History of Saladin [Extracts]
Week III: Crusading and the State
T June 10: The Loss of Jerusalem and the Angevin-Ayyubid War
Sources:
Gregory VIII, Audita tremendi
Ambroise, The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte (Boydell Press, 2011)
R June 12: The Age of Innocent III (First paper due)
Readings:
Secondary literature:
Brett E. Whalen, “Chapter 4: The Shepherd of the World,” in Dominion of God: Christendom and Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 2009)
Thomas Madden, “Food and the Fourth Crusade: A New Approach to the Diversion Question,” in Logistics and Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, ed. John H. Pryor (Aldershot, 2006), 209-228
M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, “Clamoring for God: Liturgy as a Weapon of War,” in Invisible Weapons: Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Ideology (Ithaca, 2017)
Sources:
“Letters of Innocent III to Hubert Walter,” in Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation From Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187-1291, ed. Jessalyn Bird, Edward Peters, and James Powers (Philadelphia, 2014), pp. 46-50.
“Sermon on the Commendation of the Cross,” in Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation From Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187-1291, ed. Jessalyn Bird, Edward Peters, and James Powers (Philadelphia, 2014), pp. 114-119.
Geoffrey of Villehardouin, “Conquest of Constantinople,” [chapters 1-9 only] in Chronicles of the Crusades pp. 6-89
Week IV: Crusading Society and Crusading Culture
T June 17: Crusading in the Thirteenth Century
Readings:
Secondary literature:
Gary Dickson, “Stephen of Cloyes, Philip Augustus, and the Children’s Crusade of 1212” in Journeys Toward God: Pilgrimage and Crusade, ed. Barbara Sargent-Bauer (Kalamazoo, 1992), pp. 83-105
Anne Lester, “A Shared Imitation: Cistercian Convents and Crusader Families in Thirteenth-Century Champagne,” Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 353-370 [Ejournal]
Elizabeth Siberry, “Papal and Royal Taxation,” in Criticism of Crusading, 1095-1274).
Nicholas Paul, “Missing Men,” in To Follow in Their Footsteps: the Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2012), 134-170.
Christoph Maier, “The Roles of Women in the Crusade Movement: A Survey,” Journal of Medieval History 30:1 (2004), 61-82.
Cecilia Gaposchkin, “Louis IX, the Crusade, and the Promise of Joshua in the Holy Land, Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008), 245-274
Sources:
John of Joinville, “The Life of Saint Louis,” 173-261
R. June 19: Crusades and Cultural Production
Readings:
Secondary literature (may be selected from a longer list, including):
Christoph T. Maier, “The bible moralisée and the Crusades,” in The Experience of Crusading: Western Approaches, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley (Cambride, 2003), 209-222
Lisa Perfetti, “The Crusader as Lover: The Eroticized Poetics of Crusading in Medieval France,” Speculum 88 (2013), 932-957 [Ejournal]
William Chester Jordan, “The Representation of the Crusades in the Songs Attributed to Thibaud, Count Palatine of Champagne,” Journal of Medieval History 25:1 (1999), 27-34 [Ejournal]
And select an essay from the following:
The Crusades and Visual Culture, ed. Elizabeth Lapina, April Jehan Morris, Susanna A. Throop and Laura J. Whatley (Ashgate, 2015)
Sources:
“Epitaph for Geoffrey III of Joinville,” and “S’onques nus hom pour dure departie,” and “Nus ne porroit de mauvese reson,” in Chronicles of the Crusades 337-348.
Fille du comte de Ponthieu, tr. Jean-Pierre Serge Makeieff
Week V: Crusading and the World
T June 24: Global Encounters on Crusade
Readings:
Sources:
John of Joinville, “Life of St. Louis,” 262-336.
William of Adam, How to Defeat the Saracens, tr. Giles Constable (Washington, DC, 2012)
R June 26: Where and when does it all end?
Readings:
TBA
Suggestions for presentation topics:
Gesta francorum/eyewitness accounts
Byzantium and the crusades
Crusade lyrics
Crusade preaching
Logistics (various topics)
Canon law (various topics)
Gender
Women and the crusade movement
Family traditions
Military orders
Crusading and Jewish-Christian relations
Arabic historical narratives
Treatises of reconquest
Taxation
Political ideologies
Vernacular epics
Commemorative monuments (texts, architecture, etc.)
Crusading ideology (pilgrimage, love, vengeance, etc.)
Music
Artworks
Recruitment
Trade and exchange
Interfaith relations
Society (esp. women, children)
Taxation and financial systems
Ideologies of Holy War
Jerusalem
European history (esp. Iberia and/or Baltic)
Logistics and warfare
Crusades and Eastern Christian World
England and the Crusades
Children’s Crusade
Fourth Crusade