Abstract

This article examines the transformation of Damietta's sacred space across the thirteenth century. In so doing, it shows how places were used by medieval commentators to convey particular stories about the past and how those stories underpinned contemporary ambitions. These stories, told both by eyewitnesses and by those far removed from the events of the crusades, also reveal something of how the Fifth Crusade itself was remembered after the early thirteenth century and during the Seventh Crusade. The city of Damietta was intrinsic to early memories of the crusade, but as the years went by and the Fifth Crusade receded into a distant past, the individual royal crusader – King Louis IX – came to embody and convey crusade memory.

Keywords: Damietta; memory; Louis IX; Seventh Crusade; Fifth Crusade

The city that was the glory of the pagans, the city that was the security of unbelievers, the city most heavily fortified and unconquered, besieged many times by many kings and people and never overcome, in our days He subdued it for the Holy Church and the army of Christians.