CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Simon John The crusades and apocalyptic thought in the Middle Ages
My project focuses upon the medieval crusades, a series of religiously-inspired military expeditions carried out by Latin Christians against Muslims and other perceived enemies from 1095 until at least the sixteenth century. From the start, the crusades were framed according to medieval ideas concerning the apocalypse. Beginning in 1095, contemporaries interpreted pivotal moments in crusading history in the light of eschatological beliefs. This process was underpinned by the broader medieval impulse to place momentous historical events in the continuum of Christian history, which had begun with the Creation of Man, and which would conclude with the Final Judgement at the Endtimes. My research project at CAPAS will investigate the impact of eschatological ideas in a series of Old French chansons de geste (‘songs of deeds’) devoted to the history of the crusades, and above all the First Crusade (1095-99). These texts, composed during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and directed towards an audience of largely illiterate secular martial aristocrats, were almost certainly used as recruitment material for new crusades. By bringing these texts into a scholarly conversation concerning medieval perceptions of the crusades, my work will examine the extent to which secular armsbearers may have been exposed to apocalyptic imagery linked to the crusades.