How did the Latins of the crusader Levant practice their religion? In this week's podcast, Andrew Kayaian discusses the architectural imprint of the crusaders, Latin monastic culture in the East, and the existence of shrines shared between Latins, Greeks, and Muslims. All three elements, the architecture, the Latin religious communities, and he shared spaces, remain aspects of the religious landscape of the Holy Land, as Andrew explains with reference to his own recent pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
0 Comments
Paiens unt tort e chrestiens unt dreit- "the pagans [Muslims] are wrong and the Christians are right." First shaped in the forge of holy war, we might expect the society of the Latin East to fully embrace this famous refrain from the Old French Song of Roland. But, as Alexa Amore explains, a diverse range of sources from the twelfth-century Levant may tell a different story. Sources as diverse as artworks and architecture, coins and seals, and the memoirs of the Syrian aristocrat Usamah ibn Munqidh. suggest a range of interactions and attitudes. But were these interactions driven by genuine cultural appreciation or cold political expediency?
Economically, the Latin East was a site of great complexity and apparent contradictions. As William Edwards explains in this week's podcast, the Franks had access to global trade routes and their principalities were sites for the production of sugar, olive oil, and wine. The crusader states were also characterized by their reliance on expensive imported goods. In many ways, the whole Levantine economy was dominated by the interests of the Italian maritime republics who operated communes within the ports of the Latin East, but the Kingdom also had an additional source of revenue: pilgrims.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem was once seen as an ideal feudal state, one ruled more by the will of the high nobility than the monarchy. Michael Lipari points out the many reasons why this position might now be revised. But when Jerusalem's kings acted to enhance their authority against their vassals, did they also gradually lose their grip on power in the region?
|
|