| Abstract | Paper -a:
In July 1187, during the Battle of Hattin, the Muslim forces captured the relic of the True Cross, which was believed to be the cross on which Christ himself had been crucified. The reaction in the Latin West was immense and provoked the preaching of the Third Crusade. This paper will explore the meaning that preachers tied to this relic, and how piety for the same object triggered motivation for the crusade. Given a 20-minute paper, I will focus on one example, namely the biblical pericope of Ez. 9, which preachers used to describe and interpret this event (e.g., Peter of Blois or Alan of Lille). This is based upon the methodological approach of my PhD thesis, in which I study the biblical language of crusade sermons.
Paper -b:
This paper examines how the long-term memory of Jerusalem's fall in Scripture played a part in forming a new tradition of commemoration after the fall of Jerusalem in 1187. Authors of chronicles in the Latin West used Scripture to commemorate the recent loss of Jerusalem in 1187 by comparing Old Testament descriptions with the contemporary event. The paper argues that the long-term and the contemporary version of the fall of Jerusalem created a double memory that served several functions, especially explaining and coping with the sorrow by repeating the Lamentations and describing the present as a continuation of Biblical events.
Paper -c:
This paper examines how the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187 was remembered in two related texts produced at Coggeshall Abbey in the early 13th century: Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicon Anglicanum and the anonymous Libellus de expugnatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum. It focuses in particular on the use of 'eyewitnessing' tropes by the author of the Libellus and his construction of a narrative in which the loss of individual strongholds, churches, and sacred places in the Holy Land acts repeatedly as a trigger for sophisticated exegetical commentary tying recent events to the Biblical past. The paper argues that Abbot Ralph and his scribes made an active contribution to the textual memory of the events of 1187 by disseminating the Chronicon and the Libellus.
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