A shared imitation: Cistercian convents and crusader families in thirteenth-century Champagne

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis article examines the relationship between Cistercian nunneries and the crusade movement and considers the role of gender in light of the new emphasis on penitential piety and suffering prevalent during the thirteenth century. Focused on evidence from the region of Champagne in northern France, it argues that female family members of male crusaders adopted Cistercian spirituality as a means of participating in the experience of suffering and the pursuit of the imitation of Christ that had come to be associated with the act of crusading. The connection between Cistercian nuns and crusaders was further strengthened during this period as the Cistercian order expanded its liturgy to include specific rounds of prayers for success in the east and in southern France, for Jerusalem, and for the well-being of crusaders. Many crusader families in Champagne founded Cistercian nunneries to function as family necropolises, further sharpening the connections between crusaders, memory, and suffering as experienced in female Cistercian houses.Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Over the past three decades medievalists have recast the history of the crusades in significant ways, asking new questions about who joined the movement, how each expedition differed, and q The following abbreviations have been employed: GC: Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, 16 vols (Paris, 1715-1865); AASS: Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, ed. Jean Bollandus and others (Antwerp, 1643-present; new edn Paris and Brussels, 1868-1925) AD: Archives dé partementales; and BnF: Bibliothè que nationale de France. With respect to Latin citations from original archival sources I have silently expanded abbreviated words according to classical norms and followed modern principles of punctuation. * Tel.: þ1 11 303 492 3162; fax: þ1 11 303 492 1868.

Scribal Crusading Three New Manuscript Witnesses to the Regional Reception and Transmission of First Crusade Letters

“…63 Anne Lester has argued that "prayers, both private and corporate, as well as processions and liturgical rites became a fundamental manifestation of crusade participation on the home front." 64 The Würzburg manuscript furnishes us with precious and conclusive proof that this was indeed how some medieval monks consumed and engaged with these texts. Returning to the inscription with which the present article opened, the rhyming Latin text at the head of the folio, directly above the Laodicea letter, instructed its readers to read of Jerusalem and to rejoice over its capture because, through their monastic praise, they were enhancing the glorious reverberations from the event itself and supporting the crusading movement.…”