Jerusalem the Golden: The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade

This collection brings together new work by an international cast of distinguished scholars, who explore areas as diverse as the military and ecclesiastical aspects of the First Crusade; its representation in contemporary sculpture; and the way it has been portrayed in modern fiction and film. Further contributions analyse and compare primary sources and historiography, and yet others consider the crusade in its Mediterranean context, which is sometimes overlooked. These definitive studies of established areas of research are augmented by the ground-breaking work of a number of early-career academics who are working in relatively new areas: the ‘emotional language’ used in the narrative sources; the memorialization of the crusades; and the use of literary sources for crusade studies: notably there are complementary papers on the heroes and villains depicted in the Old French poetic accounts of the First Crusade. In these twenty-one essays every historian and interested reader of medieval history will find illumination and food for thought. Susan B. Edgington is a teaching and research fellow at Queen Mary University of London. She is an authority on the sources for the First Crusade and the early history of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Luis García-Guijarro is reader in Medieval History at the University of Zaragoza. His many books and articles deal with crusades, military orders, church history, socio-economic history, and Iberia in the central Middle Ages.