Liturgy and the Crusades, 1095-1400

FAIN: FB-56015-12

Marianne Cecilia Gaposchkin
Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH 03755-1808)

I am at work on a study of the intersections of crusade and liturgy between ca. 1095 and 1400. Liturgy was a "weapon" of crusading warfare, a mechanism of sacralization of holy war, and an expression of the core ideals of crusade. Yet historians of the crusade have yet to fully exploit liturgical and ritual evidence in their exploration of crusading cultures. Through rituals of departure, processions performed on the march and in battle, daily liturgical requests for the destruction of enemies, and prayers for Holy Land relics brought back to Europe, I chart the development in the ideals of devotion, Christianity, and holy war over three centuries. Liturgy itself is not the object of study but the means by which to explore the evolution of crusading mentalités. It was also a vehicle by which the larger project of the crusades helped create "Europe" out of the individual localities of the early medieval west.