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Fideles Crucis: The Papacy, the West, and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1274-1314
Schein challenges the view that the fall of Acre in 1291 was a watershed dividing the "classical age" of the crusade from the late Middle Ages, when the ideal had become sterile, the obsessive dream of a handful of individuals. She shows instead that the desire to recover the Holy Land remained powerful and pervasive, and was an important consideration in the policy-making of European rulers.
- GenresMedieval History
320 pages, Hardcover
First published May 9, 1991
About the author
Sylvia Schein
7 books1 followerSylvia Schein (1947-2004) was a historian specialising in the Crusades and Professor of history at the university of Haifa.
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April 25, 2012I've heard somewhere that Mathematicians peak young, but historians generally take along time to produce their best work. I suppose that means that the ideal academic career would be to move from studying maths to the history of maths once you reached your mid-thirties. Sadly Sylvia Schein died young and this book based on her PhD research is one of the few she wrote.
The book covers the period from the Council of Lyons (1272-74) to the Council of Vienne (1311-12) and attempts to take a broader look at the politics of the Crusade in Europe during those years marked by the fall of Acre in 1291 and the loss of all the remaining territories held by the Crusading states along the coastline of modern Israel and Lebanon.
In the good old days crusading was simple. Vast armies of enthusiastic Christians turned up in the Middle East, did some fighting and maybe a bit of massacring too. Everybody knew where they were with this. Over time there was an increased awareness that as an approach it wasn't very useful and this is the starting point of Schein's book.
Pope Gregory X was very keen on the traditional form of crusade but at the Council of Lyons requested advice on the issues around crusading. This threw up a number of issues that dominated debate and politics in the years that followed. In short, crusading had become more complex. The successful defence of the Holy Land required Church Unions , the economic blockade of Egypt, strong states committed to the defence of the Holy Land, permanent garrisons to defend the same, preachers who knew middle eastern languages to convert the locals to Christianity, the reform of the military orders and all this had to be paid for.
In short the politics of crusading became markedly more complex. It required multi-national funding, co-operation and a unified focus. The problem was that this cut across international interests. Genoa and Venice - which had the most ships - profited hugely from trading with Egypt and so did not support blockade policies. The Byzantines were keen on discussing Union with the Papacy, but the Angevin rulers of Southern Italy supported by their Royal relative the King of France rather fancied taking over the Empire for themselves, but were also fighting Aragon over Sicily while the King of Aragon was tempted to lead a crusade against Granada rather than Jerusalem. This all - the mingling of at first disconnected political initatives - has an oddly contemporary feel to it.
The political failure sat alongside widespread waves of enthusiasm (particularly when the Mongols swept in to Syria and fought the Mamluks) and an ideology of crusade came together with the secular ambitions of rulers. This, however ended badly for the Templars as described in Barber's book The Trial of the Templars. They were hugely vulnerable as having the wealth to fund crusading activities but no crusading role after 1291. Their great rivals, the Hospitallers or Knights of St.John, managed to reinvent themselves by capturing a foreign base of their own: Rhodes (from the Byzantines) and building a fleet.
The particular strength of Schein's account, after her historiographical introduction showing the long reach of interpretations, is the broad overview of the period. How the thought and opinions of Ramon Llull came together with the Mongols in Persia and the adventures of the Catalan company in shaping the development of policy and politics. The difficulties of achieving the kind of international agreement necessary to achieve the complex goals are a microcosm of the difficulties that continued throughout the middle ages and prevented the reoccurrence of crusades of the scale and scope of those in the twelfth century.
The book covers the period from the Council of Lyons (1272-74) to the Council of Vienne (1311-12) and attempts to take a broader look at the politics of the Crusade in Europe during those years marked by the fall of Acre in 1291 and the loss of all the remaining territories held by the Crusading states along the coastline of modern Israel and Lebanon.
In the good old days crusading was simple. Vast armies of enthusiastic Christians turned up in the Middle East, did some fighting and maybe a bit of massacring too. Everybody knew where they were with this. Over time there was an increased awareness that as an approach it wasn't very useful and this is the starting point of Schein's book.
Pope Gregory X was very keen on the traditional form of crusade but at the Council of Lyons requested advice on the issues around crusading. This threw up a number of issues that dominated debate and politics in the years that followed. In short, crusading had become more complex. The successful defence of the Holy Land required Church Unions , the economic blockade of Egypt, strong states committed to the defence of the Holy Land, permanent garrisons to defend the same, preachers who knew middle eastern languages to convert the locals to Christianity, the reform of the military orders and all this had to be paid for.
In short the politics of crusading became markedly more complex. It required multi-national funding, co-operation and a unified focus. The problem was that this cut across international interests. Genoa and Venice - which had the most ships - profited hugely from trading with Egypt and so did not support blockade policies. The Byzantines were keen on discussing Union with the Papacy, but the Angevin rulers of Southern Italy supported by their Royal relative the King of France rather fancied taking over the Empire for themselves, but were also fighting Aragon over Sicily while the King of Aragon was tempted to lead a crusade against Granada rather than Jerusalem. This all - the mingling of at first disconnected political initatives - has an oddly contemporary feel to it.
The political failure sat alongside widespread waves of enthusiasm (particularly when the Mongols swept in to Syria and fought the Mamluks) and an ideology of crusade came together with the secular ambitions of rulers. This, however ended badly for the Templars as described in Barber's book The Trial of the Templars. They were hugely vulnerable as having the wealth to fund crusading activities but no crusading role after 1291. Their great rivals, the Hospitallers or Knights of St.John, managed to reinvent themselves by capturing a foreign base of their own: Rhodes (from the Byzantines) and building a fleet.
The particular strength of Schein's account, after her historiographical introduction showing the long reach of interpretations, is the broad overview of the period. How the thought and opinions of Ramon Llull came together with the Mongols in Persia and the adventures of the Catalan company in shaping the development of policy and politics. The difficulties of achieving the kind of international agreement necessary to achieve the complex goals are a microcosm of the difficulties that continued throughout the middle ages and prevented the reoccurrence of crusades of the scale and scope of those in the twelfth century.
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