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The Experience of Crusading: 1. Western Approaches ed. by Marcus Bull, Norman Housley

2005; University of California; Volume: 36; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cjm.2005.0064

1557-0290

Chris Jones,

Medieval History and Crusades

REVIEWS 222 The Experience of Crusading: 1. Western Approaches, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003) xvi + 307 pp. In the first of a two-volume Festschrift in honor of Jonathan Riley-Smith the editors, Marcus Bull and Norman Housley, unite seventeen essays under the subtitle Western Approaches. Part of the appeal of this volume lies in Bull and Housley’s broad interpretation of their theme: Alongside detailed analysis of, for example, an account of the Second Crusade by one of its participants, King Louis VII’s chaplain, Odo of Deuil, the reader also finds an exploration of approaches to the First Crusade amongst post-World War II European and American novelists. Like its sister volume, Defining the Crusader Kingdom,10 Western Approaches divides its content between four sections, in this case: The crusades and crusading, The Catholic Church and the crusade, The military orders, and Retrospective. The first of these sections is preceded by an informative , albeit brief, appreciation of its dedicatee’s substantial contribution to the study of crusading and the military orders, drawing particular attention to Riley -Smith’s extensive work concerned with the Hospitallers and the practice of sacred violence. The crusades and crusading begins with Marcus Bull’s own contribution to the volume. This forms a neat link with the introductory appreciation, focusing as it does upon a key area of Riley-Smith’s own work, the motivations of the first crusaders. The use of accounts of miracles to cast light on western perceptions of both Jerusalem and Muslims is certainly an interesting approach. It is, therefore, a pity that Bull chose to confine his actual analysis of these perceptions to the last few pages of an article that is rather weighed down by a lengthy theoretical introduction. The essay that follows is linked to Bull’s by its use of an account involving miracles, that of the translation of Saint Vincent’s relics. Giles Constable uses this material to suggest that contemporaries, at least those in twelfth-century Portugal, considered the conquest of Lisbon to be an integral part of the Second Crusade. Constable clearly touches upon an important topic, the Muslim presence in Spain and its relationship with the crusade movement, yet the brevity of his article, and the fact that this is the only contribution in the volume devoted to the Iberian peninsula, mean this topic is not explored in as much depth as might have been desirable. In the second editorial contribution to this volume, Norman Housley offers a fascinating explanation for the decline in large-scale crusading expeditions after the thirteenth century. He suggests that contemporary awareness of the cost of crusading played a key role in the decline in enthusiasm for the general passage and an increased preference for the passagium particulare. Housley suggests that contemporaries found a large-scale expedition something invariably difficult to price, and so frequently exhibited a preference for planning small-scale expeditions which could be priced with greater accuracy. Housley’s conclusion, “a strengthening of the argument that in this period, as earlier, few people contemplated crusading for the sake of their financial well-being” (59), 10 The Experience of Crusading: 2. Defining the Crusader Kingdom, ed. Peter Edbury and Jonathan Phillips (Cambridge 2003). REVIEWS 223 is also an apt introduction to Christopher Marshall’s exploration of the motivations that lay behind the involvement of the Italian city republics in the First Crusade and its immediate aftermath. Marshall offers a convincing refutation of the oft-repeated assumption that Italian involvement in this expedition was largely motivated by financial considerations. He shows clearly that while motives for participation were always mixed, both Italians and other participants on the First Crusade considered the former’s motivations to extend beyond the mercantile. Although Marshall is undoubtedly correct to point out that historians need to take account of genuine spiritual motivations and to avoid the assumption that Italian interest in the crusade stemmed entirely from a desire to establish a dominance over trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, one potential problem with his argument lies in his treatment of his sources: It is almost certainly worth exploring the motivations of Italian chroniclers before assuming that...