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DTSTAMP:20130520T202811Z
DTSTART:20120313T173000Z
DTEND:20120313T183000Z
STATUS:CONFIRMED
TRANSP:OPAQUE
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1, Department of History
SUMMARY:Satanus, Drahonus and Iudas Machabeus: Maccabees in the Sources of
  the Crusades
DESCRIPTION:Elizabeth Lapina is studying the history of the crusades and i
 s particularly interested in their understanding and representations in th
 e Middle Ages.  More specifically, her research deals with the chroni
 cles and iconography of the crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth ceturie
 s.  She is currently preparing a book, provisionally entitled ''Thing
 s Done in a Foreign Land': Perceptions and Representations of the First Cr
 usade,' in which she  examines several chronicles of the First Crusad
 e and argues that they were more sophisticated than it is usually believed
 , revealing the existence of a number of competing visions on various aspe
 cts of the crusading.The First Crusade was the most chronicled event of th
 e Middle Ages. More than a dozen authors attempted to find an explanation 
 for why a hundred thousand people left their homes to conquer Jerusalem fr
 om the "infidels" and how, after many trials and tribulations, they succee
 ded in doing so. For a medieval writer of history, the most natural way to
  make sense of the First Crusade was through drawing comparisons with the 
 wars waged in the same locations by the Jews of the Old Testament, particu
 larly the Maccabees. A series of scholars have recently established that r
 eferences to Maccabees are omnipresent in crusading sources. In my paper I
  will attempt to demonstrate that the attitudes towards Maccabees in the c
 hroniclers were far from uniform. A careful reading of the sources reveals
  a backlash against the assimilation of the crusaders to the Jewish warrio
 rs of the past. Although the chroniclers were more concerned with what the
 y deemed to be proper uses of exegesis than with contemporary Jews, the as
 similation of the Jews to Muslims in some of the texts suggests that anti-
 Jewish violence that accompanied some of the crusades was a logical by-pro
 duct of crusading ideas.
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