Piety, Brotherhood and Power: The Role and Significance of Emotions in Albert of Aachen'sHistoria Ierosolimitana

Abstract

This article explores the role and significance of emotions in the Historia Ierosolimitana attributed to Albert of Aachen, long recognised as one of the most detailed and colourful histories of the First Crusade and the early years of Latin settlement in the East. Rather than attempting to reconstruct the crusaders' lived passions, it analyses the comments the author made about emotions and the ways in which emotion terms functioned in his history. It will be argued that emotions interacted with, and helped to communicate, a number of key themes in Albert's Historia, three of which are discussed here: crusader piety; Christian brotherhood; and power. At the same time, through a comparison with contemporaneous narratives of the First Crusade, it will be suggested that the emotional content of Albert's Historia is not without historical value, for it offers a window onto wider social and cultural conceptions of emotions in the 12th century.Research into the emotional standards of the Middle Ages -and, indeed, most periods of historyhas been facilitated by developments in the field of anthropology, above all the emergence of 'social constructionism': the revelation that, albeit partly biologically preconfigured, emotions and the valuations we attach to them are conditioned by social and cultural stimuli (Harré; Lutz and White). Though not without its critics (Reddy, 'Against Constructionism'), the social constructionist viewpoint has enabled historians -including Barbara Rosenwein, Piroska Nagy and Damien Boquet -to overturn traditionalist interpretations of the Middle Ages as an era of emotional turmoil (Huizinga 13-14; Elias 60) and has simultaneously spawned a number of alternative methodological approaches.