Papal legates who appealed to potential crusaders by preaching also tried to explain to soldiers and commanders the many defeats the Christian armies endured, even though they were carrying out what ...they asserted to be God’s wishes. This article examines two memorial sermons preached by the legate, Eudes of Châteauroux, after the failure of the crusade of King Louis IX (r. 1226–1270), during which the ruler’s brother, Count Robert of Artois, died in battle at the Egyptian town of Mansourah.
An anonymous minstrel in thirteenth-century France composed this gripping account of historical events in his time. Crusaders and Muslim forces battle for control of the Holy Land, while power ...struggles rage between and among religious authorities and their conflicting secular counterparts, pope and German emperor, the kings of England and the kings of France. Meanwhile, the kings cannot count on their independent-minded barons to support or even tolerate the royal ambitions. Although politics (and the collapse of a royal marriage) frame the narrative, the logistics of war are also in play: competing military machinery and the challenges of transporting troops and matariel. Inevitably, the civilian population suffers. The minstrel was a professional story-teller, and his livelihood likely depended on his ability to captivate an audience. Beyond would-be objective reporting, the minstrel dramatizes events through dialogue, while he delves into the motives and intentions of important figures, and imparts traditional moral guidance. We follow the deeds of many prominent women and witness striking episodes in the lives of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionhearted, Blanche of Castile, Frederick the Great, Saladin, and others. These tales survive in several manuscripts, suggesting that they enjoyed significant success and popularity in their day. Samuel N. Rosenberg produced this first scholarly translation of the Old French tales into English. References that might have been obvious to the minstrel’s original audience are explained for the modern reader in the indispensable annotations of medieval historian Randall Todd Pippenger. The introduction by eminent medievalist William Chester Jordan places the minstrel’s work in historical context and discusses the surviving manuscript sources.
John of Garland on the Jews Jordan, William Chester
Journal of medieval history,
08/2022, Volume:
48, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The works of John of Garland, an Englishman who taught in Paris and Toulouse in the first half of the thirteenth century, have many virulent passages describing the Jews of his day. Although he never ...denied the possibility that conversion to Christianity could redeem the Jews, he thought it unlikely they would come over to the Catholic faith or remain steadfast in the religion. His invective was extreme by the standards of the time but was influential in that it appeared in many of his pedagogical works for adolescents and young men at the universities. These works and others which were directed at a more learned audience, like those that praised the Virgin Mary and extolled the triumphs of the Church Militant, were written in rhetorically complex Latin and have not attracted the interest they deserve from scholars. This article is a first attempt toward remedying this state of affairs.
The Slaves of the Churches: A History Jordan, William Chester
The Catholic Historical Review,
09/2022, Volume:
108, Issue:
4
Journal Article, Book Review
This absorbing book explores the tensions within the Roman Catholic church and between the church and royal authority in France in the crucial period 1290-1321. During this time the crown tried to ...force churchmen to accept policies many considered inconsistent with ecclesiastical freedom and traditions--such as paying war taxes and expelling the Jews from the kingdom. William Jordan considers these issues through the eyes of one of the most important and courageous actors, the Cistercian monk, professor, abbot, and polemical writer Jacques de Thrines. The result is a fresh perspective on what Jordan terms "the story of France in a politically terrifying period of its existence, one of unceasing strife and unending fear."
