This book presents an edition of seventeen manuscript sermon texts for the preaching of the crusades from the thirteenth to the early fourteenth centuries by five prominent scholars and churchmen. The majority of these texts have never been printed before. These sermons are unique sources for the study of the crusades and medieval preaching, two vibrant areas of medieval studies in both academic teaching and research. Accompanying the Latin texts is an English translation, making these sources accessible to a wider circle of students and scholars.

The most recent cutting-edge scholarship on the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. The essays collected here demonstrate the rich vitality of scholarship in this area. This volume has a particular focus on the interrelations between the various parts of north-western Europe. After the opening piece on Lotharingia, there are detailed studies of the relationship between Ponthieu and its Norman neighbours, and between the Norman and Angevin duke-kings and the other French nobility, followed by an investigation of the world of demons and possession in Norman Italy, with additional observations on the subject in twelfth-century England. Meanwhile, the York massacre of the Jews in 1190 is set in a wider context, showing the extent to which crusader enthusiasm led to the pogroms that so marred Anglo-Jewish relations, not just in York but elsewhere in England; and there is an exploration of poverty in London, also during the 1190s, viewed through the prism of the life and execution of William fitz Osbert. Another chapter demonstrates the power of comparative history to illuminate the norms of proprietary queenship, so often overlooked by historians of both kingship and queenship. And two essays focusing on landscape bring the physical into close association with the historical: on the equine landscape of eleventh and twelfth-century England, adding substantially to our understanding of the place of the horse in late Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman societies, and on the Brut narratives of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Lazamon, arguing that they use realistic landscapes in their depiction of the action embedded in their tales, so demonstrating the authors' grasp of the practical realities of contemporary warfare and the role played by landscapes in it.

This book, first published in 2000, presents an edition of seventeen ad status model sermons for the preaching of the crusades from the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The majority of these texts had never been printed before publication of this book. They are unique sources for the content of crusade propaganda in the later Middle Ages, giving a rare insight into the way in which propaganda shaped the public's view of crusading during that period. Accompanying the Latin texts is an English translation which is aimed at making these sources accessible to a wider circle of students and scholars. The first part of the book consists of a study of these model sermons which focuses on their place in the pastoral reform movement of the thirteenth century, their specific character as models for the use of crusade propagandists, their internal structure, and the image of the crusade conveyed in the texts.

This study throws new light on both the history of the crusades and the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century. It describes the way in which the Franciscan and Dominican orders became involved in preaching the cross and examines their contribution to the crusading movement of the thirteenth century. It explains the role of the papacy in organizing recruitment campaigns through the propagandist activities of the mendicant friars. The book also shows the friars' involvement in providing finance for the crusades, despite their vows of absolute poverty.