Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Map of Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Latin East (c.1145)
- Introduction
- 1 The Monastic Response to the First Crusade
- 2 The Foundations of Crusading Spirituality, 1095–c.1110
- 3 Pilgrimage, Mimesis and the Holy Land, 1099–c.1149
- 4 The Cistercian Influence on Crusading Spirituality, c.1128–1187
- 5 The Introduction of Crusading to Iberia, 1096–c.1134
- 6 The Development of Crusading Spirituality in Iberia, c.1130–c.1150
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Map of Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Latin East (c.1145)
- Introduction
- 1 The Monastic Response to the First Crusade
- 2 The Foundations of Crusading Spirituality, 1095–c.1110
- 3 Pilgrimage, Mimesis and the Holy Land, 1099–c.1149
- 4 The Cistercian Influence on Crusading Spirituality, c.1128–1187
- 5 The Introduction of Crusading to Iberia, 1096–c.1134
- 6 The Development of Crusading Spirituality in Iberia, c.1130–c.1150
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In his seminal work on the changes in the religious life of the central Middle Ages, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, Giles Constable argued that historians should adopt a new framework for understanding medieval religious experience:
In looking at twelfth-century religious life, and the movement of reform, it is customary to put in the centre the highly institutionalized types of forms, above all the monks and canons, who led a strict community life, and to see the hermits, recluses, lay brothers, and members of the military orders as peripheral, with pilgrims, penitents, wandering preachers, and crusaders on the margins and all the other various types, if they are considered at all, in a shadowy penumbra. It may be closer to the realities of medieval religious life to think in terms of a different model, putting the individual religious experience at the centre, surrounded by various forms of religious life, of which each was no less important for those involved in them than the more highly organized communities were for their members.
Constable's model suggests that studying the activities and devotions of crusaders ought to be regarded as being as important as analysing those of the Cistercians or Carthusians if a properly nuanced understanding of the religious life of the period is to be reached because, as he put it, in the twelfth century, ‘A pilgrimage or a crusade … might fill as profound a need in some people as a lifetime reciting the psalms or enclosed in a cell did for others’.
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- Information
- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008