The subject of crusade : lyric, romance, and materials, 1150 to 1500

In the Middle Ages, religious crusaders took up arms, prayed, bade farewell to their families, and marched off to fight in holy wars. These Christian soldiers also created accounts of their lives in lyric poetry, putting words to the experience of personal sacrifice and the pious struggle associated with holy war. The crusaders affirmed their commitment to fighting to claim a distant land while revealing their feelings as they left behind their loved ones, homes, and earthly duties. Their poems and related visual works offer us insight into the crusaders&; lives and values at the boundaries of earthly and spiritual duties, body and soul, holy devotion and courtly love. In T__he Subject of Crusade__, Marisa Galvez offers a nuanced view of holy war and crusade poetry, reading these lyric works within a wider conversation with religion and culture. Arguing for an interdisciplinary treatment of crusade lyric, she shows how such poems are crucial for understanding the crusades as a complex cultural and historical phenomenon. Placing them in conversation with chronicles, knightly handbooks, artworks, and confessional and pastoral texts, she identifies a particular &;crusade idiom&; that emerged out of the conflict between pious and earthly duties. Galvez fashions an expanded understanding of the creative works made by crusaders to reveal their experiences, desires, ideologies, and reasons for taking up the cross. "Marisa Galvez challenges received ideas about medieval lyric poetry and Arthurian romance at a time when terms like "crusade," "medieval," and "holy war" continue to be tossed about unexamined in popular media in relation to Islamist fundamentalism. "The Subject of Crusade" offers a more complex view of crusade and holy war, arguing that vernacular crusade lyric and romance of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries and related visual artworks of the fifteenth century can tell us a different story if we read them as literary texts as much as historical documents. Placing chronicles and knightly handbooks in conversation with confessional and pastoral texts, she identifies a "crusade idiom" that emerged out of a conflict between what European poet/crusaders saw as their pious duty as Christian soldiers, on the one hand, and their earthly duties toward their clans, on the other. How, Galvez asks, does a Christian soldier articulate a sincere intention to go on a crusade while responsibilities toward family and fields at home intervene? Put another way: How does one affirm an intention to physically suffer in Syria in order to help save the Holy Land? Or how do courtly concerns differ for a Frankish knight in faraway Cyprus versus a lord in the relative security of Champagne? By placing crusade love lyric and romances in dialogue with pastoral and confessional documents, Galvez is able to read the conventions and tropes across genres usually kept separate as writers and artists respond to historical and moral problems of the day. The book gives a different picture of how lay people of the period thought about crusading"-- Provided by publisher In the Middle Ages, religious crusaders took up arms, prayed, bade farewell to their families, and marched off to fight in holy wars. These Christian soldiers also created accounts of their lives in lyric poetry, putting words to the experience of personal sacrifice and the pious struggle associated with holy war. The crusaders affirmed their commitment to fighting to claim a distant land while revealing their feelings as they left behind their loved ones, homes, and earthly duties. Their poems and related visual works offer us insight into the crusaders' lives and values at the boundaries of earthly and spiritual duties, body and soul, holy devotion and courtly love. In T he Subject of Crusade , Marisa Galvez offers a nuanced view of holy war and crusade poetry, reading these lyric works within a wider conversation with religion and culture. Arguing for an interdisciplinary treatment of crusade lyric, she shows how such poems are crucial for understanding the crusades as a complex cultural and historical phenomenon. Placing them in conversation with chronicles, knightly handbooks, artworks, and confessional and pastoral texts, she identifies a particular "crusade idiom" that emerged out of the conflict between pious and earthly duties. Galvez fashions an expanded understanding of the creative works made by crusaders to reveal their experiences, desires, ideologies, and reasons for taking up the cross. Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Introduction. The Courtly Crusade Idiom 10 Chapter One. The Unrepentant Crusader: The Figure of the Separated Heart 38 Chapter Two. Idiomatic Movement and Separation in Middle High German and Occitan Crusade Departure Lyric 70 Chapter Three. The Heart as Witness: Lyric and Romance 96 Chapter Four. Lancelot as Unrepentant Crusader in the Perlesvaus 124 Chapter Five. Three Ways of Describing a Crusader-Poet: Adjacency, Genre-Existence, and Performative Reconfigurations 174 Chapter Six. The Feast of the Pheasant as Courtly Crusade Idiom 228 Conclusion. Toward a More Complex View of Crusade 274 Acknowledgments 278 Notes 282 Index 314