Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain consists of nine essays spanning the early medieval period to the early modern era. In their introduction, editors Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley explain their desire to focus not on the military or political aspects of crusading, but rather on the ways in which medieval British culture was shaped by the Holy Land, both in its physical sense and as an imaginative concept. The editors’ multidisciplinary approach to this subject is reflected in the volume's contributors, who include historians, art historians, and literary scholars.
Chapter 1 from Meg Boulton examines physical recreations of earthly Jerusalem as well as metaphysical representations of the Heavenly City in England during the centuries preceding the First Crusade. She emphasizes three expressions of interest in the Holy Land: textural descriptions of pilgrimage; ecclesiastical architecture that referenced that of Jerusalem; and the uniquely insular monumental stone crosses of the period, which served as reliquaries as well as storytelling markers upon the landscape. These depictions of the Holy Land, Boulton argues, significantly shaped the early English Church's ideas about the past, present, and apocalyptic future.
In chapter 2, Natalia I. Petrovskaia traces English, French, and Welsh versions of the twelfth-century treatise Imago Mundi that circulated in Britain to the end of the fifteenth century. Petrovskaia argues that while the texts’ descriptions of Europe reflect the changing political landscape through time, descriptions of the Holy Land in those same texts remain relatively static. This, she suggests, demonstrates that British writers held a more conceptual biblical/historical view of the Levant than one grounded in contemporary reality.
Taking the crusader king Richard I as her subject in chapter 3, Marianne Ailes examines how Richard was mythologized and memorialized in texts written in the decades following his death. Ailes emphasizes that translations of these texts moved both ways between Latin and vernacular languages depending on the goals and audience(s) of their translators. These multilingual translations, Ailes argues, built a “social memory” (83) around Richard's crusading legacy that contributed to a national identity superseding linguistic barriers.
In chapter 4, Elisa A. Foster explores holy sites in and around Walsingham. Several structures, she notes, were either crusader foundations or, as in the case of the Holy House of Walsingham, recreated portions of the Holy Land within England. Sites along the East Anglian pilgrims’ way further cultivated devotion to Mary and the Incarnation together with the memory of Christ's death. Foster argues that Henry III, who was keen on linking places affiliated with Edward the Confessor to those suggestive of the Holy Land, patronized these sites as a means of endowing his reign with additional religious power.
For Laura Slater in chapter 5, the construction of local religious monuments took on a particular significance for crusaders’ families in the twelfth century. If a crusader's body could not be recovered from the Holy Land, his family could imagine his empty tomb back home in England as akin to the empty tomb of Christ in the Holy Sepulchre. Crusaders’ monumental endowments further cemented their family legacies, reminding their descendants and neighbors that the family had crusading heritage and enjoyed the resultant status associated with that.
Kathryn Hurlock brings the discussion into the early modern era in chapter 6, examining Welsh gentry who built their families’ reputations upon claims (some real, some invented) of ancestors who were Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. Hurlock examines how membership in this fraternity functioned as a status symbol in a time when noble genealogy was vital to a gentleman's reputation. Claiming such a knight as an ancestor further helped post-Reformation Welsh gentry assert their Catholicism and thereby their independence from Protestant England.
In chapter 7, Laura Whatley focuses on the Lambeth Apocalypse (ca. 1260–1275) and its patron, Eleanor de Quincy. Whatley uses the manuscript as a means of exploring the gendered nature of English illuminated Apocalypses and their role in allowing noble women to participate remotely in the crusading enterprise. The female figures of Revelation, she argues, served as a “spiritual surrogate” (179) for Eleanor, allowing her to insert herself into the action of crusading and of Revelation.
Chapter 8 focuses on a copy of the Livre d'Eracles made in Burgundy for Edward IV. Erin K. Donavan examines how the text and images in this manuscript served as an exemplar of good and bad kingship. The manuscript's iconography, she argues, depicts imperial themes and ideas about the restoration of peace through illustrative and textual choices that highlight a royal English perspective while downplaying the role of other Christian leaders in the crusading enterprise.
In the volume's final chapter, Katherine J. Lewis examines crusading ideology in BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI and how it reflected Henry VIII's ideas of kingship. Lewis views the manuscript's themes of crusading valor as mirroring Henry's values of masculine honor and his interest in war. Lewis further suggests that the manuscript reflects Henry's foreign policy, particularly regarding his often-contentious relationships with Francis I and Charles V, both of whom had committed to fighting the Turks in their bids to become Holy Roman Emperor.
The images that accompany each essay are high quality and the majority are reproduced in full color. Notably absent is a map, which, while not vital to the contents, would be a useful reference. Some chapters (for example, chapter 2) would also benefit from charts to help the reader keep track of relationships between textual variants. While the editors have arranged the essays loosely by theme, a slightly more chronological approach would have made the essays flow better without disrupting the thematic resonances across chapters.
Ultimately, Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain will be useful to anyone interested in questions of patronage, memory construction, textual transmission, and iconography, as well as in medieval Britain and the crusades.
