| Abstract | Paper -a:
In several accounts of the First Crusade, religious visions play an important role in the conversion of the Antiochene traitor. This is particularly seen in Robert the Monk's Historia Iherosolimitana, in which he questions the appearance of Christian martyrs who help the Crusaders, expressing particular curiosity on where they obtained their horses and weapons. This leads to a discussion with a chaplain on the origins and physical nature of such visions. Using this episode as a starting point, this paper will consider similar examples of religious visions, assessing the insight they provide into medieval cosmology.
Paper -b:
In accordance with the Bible, medieval people expected crucial events of salvific significance to be presaged by mighty portents in sky or on earth. In terms of the First Crusade, contemporaries reported a variety of natural phenomena accompanying the God-ordained expedition to Jerusalem. This paper aims to explore the early crusaders' reactions to unusual phenomena, such as eclipses, meteor showers or earthquakes, ranging from anxiety to enthusiasm, and their controversial attempts to make sense of them. Drawing on examples of eyewitness accounts and 12th-century historiographical evidence, I will further examine how crusade chroniclers tried - or deliberately refrained from - fitting these signa into a framework of providential or apocalyptic historiography.
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