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612-822-4611
Depicting the Holy War: Crusader Imagery in Medieval French and English Murals

Depicting the Holy War: Crusader Imagery in Medieval French and English Murals

Hardcover

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryGeneral Military History

ISBN10: 0271099240
ISBN13: 9780271099248
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: Apr 29 2025
Pages: 224
Weight: 1.60
Height: 0.46 Width: 7.36 Depth: 10.17
Language: English

Depicting the Holy War examines the impact that crusades in the Middle East had on societies in western Europe through the analysis of a heretofore largely ignored type of source: mural paintings.

In this book, Elizabeth Lapina analyzes five programs of mural paintings from the early twelfth to the late thirteenth century in what is today France and England--in Hardham, Berzé-la-Ville, Poncé-sur-le-Loir, Cressac, and Tour Ferrande. These images provide rare sources of information about attitudes toward crusades in locations that have produced next to no written evidence about the subject, such as rural parishes. Four of the murals are found in ecclesiastical structures, themselves sacred and made more so as the location of the celebration of mass. This sacralization of violence, Lapina argues, led to changing attitudes toward the enemy and depictions of battles as holy wars between the forces of good and evil. The mural paintings come from England, Normandy, Aquitaine, Provence, and Burgundy, areas that supplied both numerous crusaders and ideas related to crusades. Taken together, the murals show a trend toward an acceptance and celebration of increasingly varied types of violence across the period.

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Medieval & Renaissance History