Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Eyewitnesses of Miracles
2 Supernatural Interventions in the Battle of Antioch: The Origins
3 Hostile Appropriations of Byzantine Saints by the Normans of the South
4 The Normans of the South: From Scourge of God to Chosen People
5 Judas Maccabeus: A Jewish Warrior, a Christian Patriarch, and a Muslim General
6 “The West Prepares to Illuminate the East”
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Elizabeth Lapina is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“Taking as a leitmotif a celebrated moment from the narratives of
the First Crusade—the appearance of an army of saints during the
siege of Antioch—Elizabeth Lapina gradually builds an original and
convincing interpretation of crusader psychology and
historiography. Her contribution to our understanding of the part
played by the Normans in the development of crusade ideology is
especially groundbreaking. This is an important and innovative work
that is also, from start to finish, a delight to read.”—Jay
Rubenstein,University of Tennessee
“Students and scholars will be very well served by Lapina’s careful
attention to detail and placement of the crusader tales of
miraculous battlefield interventions within a wider
context.”—Choice
“This is an impressive piece of work that brings a new level of
understanding to our knowledge of the Crusade chronicles. It is
impeccably researched and demonstrates a close attention to detail.
There are moments of real originality and many insightful
observations. Lapina founds her conclusions upon a strongly rooted
base of contextual research which allows her to identify moments
when the chronicles were drawing upon deep veins of received wisdom
dating back to antiquity, and also occasions when they were
advancing ideas that were fundamentally new.”—Nicholas Morton The
Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture
“Whether undergraduates or more advanced researchers, all those
studying the First Crusade will very much benefit from this book
and I, for one, will read these sources with new eyes having
benefited from Lapina’s new perspectives.”—Conor Kostick
Renaissance Quarterly
“This is an excellent and rigorous study of what many would see as
a niche group of texts. As Lapina has shown, however, these texts
were nothing less than medieval efforts to understand the meaning
of the crusade. As such, they connected with much more than the
events they purported to describe.”—Megan Cassidy-Welch
Parergon
“Lapina takes a fresh look at how the events in Antioch were
reported in chronicles (those written by participants in the
Crusades and those created by stay-at-home writers in Western
Europe immediately afterwards) and chansons de geste.”—Brian G. H.
Ditcham Sixteenth Century Journal
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