Guibert of Nogent (c. 1061-c. 1125) wrote several books--including a Crusade chronicle and an autobiography--which touch upon almost aspects of life in the Middle Ages. He lived at a time of immense social and intellectual change, and in his early life he wrote books emblematic …
Richard I took the cross in 1187 and went on crusade in 1190. This dissertation examines Richard's decision in two contexts. First, Richard was the product of a twelfth-century culture that promoted and idealized crusade. Richard internalized conceptions of crusade from the fami…
Situated outside Constantinople, the monastery of Theotokos Evergetis was the largest and most important of the Byzantine capital; its liturgy became the model for several monasteries even on Mt. Athos. Scholars have long acknowledged the importance of the Evergetis Synaxarion (…
This dissertation examines the spiritual theology of Peter of Damascus, a twelfth-century Byzantine monk and spiritual theologian who flourished around 1157. To accomplish this I employ the two works of spiritual theology authored by Peter: “The Book of our Holy and God-bearing …
The twelfth-century rulers of Jerusalem had a singular opportunity to construct kingship. Although they were reges novi (upstarts who did not come from royal families), they ruled in a realm with no pre-existing traditions of western kingship. Representations of kingship in Jeru…
An important theme in medieval intellectual history was the attempt by exegetes from the 12th century onward to reconcile and integrate the new information coming from Greek authors, whose writings were translated and sometimes interpreted by the Arabs, with the body of culture …
William Longchamp (d. 1197), bishop of Ely, papal legate for the British Isles, chief justiciar of England, and chancellor to King Richard I, faced several accusations--including tyrannical rule, low birth, and homosexuality--from many of his contemporaries. Despite being repeat…
This study shows medieval writers transforming animal fable, twelfth century to Robert Henryson, with comparisons to bestiary. It discusses innovators in social satire and in witty freedom with meanings. Their moralizations for traditional stories provide test cases for modern t…
Employing overseas agents was the "technically" efficient method of organizing an important transaction in "pre-modern" long-distance commerce, namely, the supply of the services required in handling a merchant's goods abroad. However, the merchant-agent relations were character…
The purpose of this work is to provide a political narrative of the Abbasid dynasty during the 11ᵗʰ and 12ᵗʰ centuries showing that the caliphs were key figures in the political-cultural arena rather than impotent puppets as we have often portrayed them in the secondary literatu…
This work hopes to fill the need for a complete treatment of the question of possible influence of the Hellenistic and Byzantine romance on the Old French romance of the twelfth century. Adopting a traditional historical approach, along with a consideration of symbols and motifs…
This dissertation examines the commentaries of Rashi and the Glossa Ordinaria on the Binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, the similarities and differences between the two commentaries, and the ways that these commentaries adapt and transform their rabbinic and patristic or Carolingia…
Sarasins and Franks examines the ways in which European Christians and Mediterranean Muslims portrayed one another in purportedly learned works dealing with geography and ethnography, as well as in popular works of fiction and non-fiction. Using Edward Said's concept of the Othe…
The relationship of the papacy to the Jews in the Middle Ages, which had developed under the influences of Patristic writers, Roman law, and papal precedent, was marked in the twelfth century by toleration and increasing restriction, but also by papal protection. Between the Fir…
The Figure of a Hero argues that medieval historians did not entrust the transmission of the important deeds of their age to a literalist language of representation. Rather, the great historians of the twelfth-century saw the writing of history as an artful project that was only…
This dissertation is an examination of Queen Melisende's piety, power, and patronage in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem of the twelfth century. The principal sources used to assess her reign are William of Tyre's A History of the Deeds Done Beyond the Sea and the royal charters i…
The late antique Latin translations of the works of the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus exerted a profound and many-faceted influence on medieval Christian scholarship in the Latin West. Though the ubiquitous nature of the influence and incorporation of these wor…
Modern historical inquiry into the crusade movement continues to be shaped by the overarching question of what exactly the crusade was. Instead of focusing on the ways in which the institutional authorities that summoned and organized these expeditions defined them, this dissert…