Invisible Weapons: Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Ideology

by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin

Overview

Throughout the history of the Crusades, liturgical prayer, masses, and alms were all marshaled in the fight against Muslim armies. In Invisible Weapons, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin focuses on the ways in which Latin Christians communicated their ideas and aspirations for crusade to God through liturgy, how public worship was deployed, and how prayers and masses absorbed the ideals and priorities of crusading. Placing religious texts and practices within the larger narrative of crusading, Gaposchkin offers a new understanding of a crucial facet in the culture of holy war.

Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501707971
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/17/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	378
Sales rank:	373,562
File size:	9 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

M. Cecilia Gaposchkin is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Dartmouth College. She is the author of The Making of Saint Louis and the coeditor of The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres.

Table of Contents

IntroductionPreliminariesChapter 1. Liturgy and the Origins of Crusade IdeologyChapter 2. From Pilgrimage to CrusadeChapter 3. On the MarchChapter 4. Celebrating the Capture of Jerusalem in the Holy CityChapter 5. Echoes of Victory in the WestChapter 6. Clamoring to God: Liturgy as a Weapon of WarChapter 7. Praying against the TurksConclusion

What People are Saying About This

Jonathan Phillips

In this tremendously engaging and important book, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin deftly reveals the centrality of liturgical ideas and practices to the crusading movement. In clear and convincing style she takes us through the evolution of crusading ideology and then links developments in liturgical texts and practices with the broader narrative of crusading history. In her accessible and impressive use of these often-neglected materials, she convincingly demonstrates how these 'invisible weapons' formed yet another dimension of crusading's impact on the people of western Europe.

Jay Rubenstein

In Invisible Weapons, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin draws together two highly technical, specialized fields—crusades studies and liturgical studies. Her use of unpublished manuscript materials provides a great service to students of the crusade. For liturgists, Invisible Weapons will prove to be similarly useful and provocative, casting light on how church ceremonies evolved and adapted to specific historical circumstances.

Philippe Buc

This is a fundamental book. Building on Amnon Linder's pioneering studies, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin reveals with clarity of pen the importance of the Latin Christian liturgy for the crusades. Liturgy provided key notions to warriors even before the First Crusade; it was adapted regionally to the vagaries in time and place of holy war, this over the centuries, all the way to the Ottoman expansion. It expressed and spread, in alternating waves, apocalyptic hopes, disappointments, the mandate of reform and purification. Critically, the book makes clear how the liturgy transmitted to European culture at large clerical notions of Sacred History, divine will, vengeance, penance, and necessary reform, and so made the crusade a total cultural form, impacting and involving all Western and Central Europeans.

Christopher Tyerman

With alert, exact, meticulous scholarship on an impressively rich array of primary sources, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin reveals the precise liturgical frame behind the origins, shape, and development of crusade ideology across four centuries. This fresh, lucid, compelling, and accessible analysis of complex evidence provides a comprehensive study of how crusading was imagined within the context of wider Christian worship and religious culture. Gaposchkin's forensic study of how ideas on holy war were articulated in regular devotional observance offers access more generally to the public operation of medieval mentalities. Anyone with an interest in crusader studies or in the relationship of formal religious practice with the aspirations of popular faith will benefit from engaging with this significant contribution.

Christoph T. Maier

M. Cecilia Gaposchkin's new book represents the cutting edge of modern crusade studies. It establishes liturgy as a defining force of medieval crusading, its practice, and its ideology.

Editorial Reviews

This illuminating and detailed book reveals an aspect of crusading that is too easily forgotten—the practice of prayer and its dynamic relationship with the practice of arms—and urges us to remember that medieval Latin Christians were as serious about their faith as they were about their warfare.

Reading Religion

In this exceptionally learned, well-written, and important monograph, Gaposchkin makes a singular contribution to not one but two fields: liturgical studies and crusades history.... This is a monumental work deserving the attention of every medievalist.

Church History

The intricate web linking thought, expression, and action at the heart of this marvelous book [will surely make it] indispensable for anyone interested in the Crusades as a manifestation of medieval religious culture.

American Historical Review

Gaposchkin delivers her argument not only with historical exactitude and ingenuity, but also with the care of a seasoned educator.... Gaposchkin’s work stands at the top of crusade studies. Her work will strengthen the syllabi of seminars dedicated to liturgical history, especially of the medieval and crusading periods, and associated reading lists for doctoral students.

Homiletic

This is a hardworking and exciting piece of work... that makes an original and impressive contribution to scholarship on the crusades.

The Medieval Review

A model demonstration of how the liturgy promoted ecclesiastical goals, and how the technical, seemingly intractable, medieval liturgy can be made accessible to historians.... Comprehensive, convincing, and successful.

H-France Review

Invisible Weapons is one of the most important books on the crusades to be published in recent decades. Like the very best scholarship in the field, it deepens our understanding of the crusades and the ideology that fuelled them, but situates the whole phenomenon within the wider cultural context of the medieval West, revealing ultimately how 'the liturgy imbibed the ideals of crusade such that crusade ideals and aspirations became part of Christian identity'

Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern St

Invisible Weapons is one of the most important books on the crusades to be published in recent decades. Like the very best scholarship in the field, it deepens our understanding of the crusades and the ideology that fuelled them, but situates the whole phenomenon within the wider cultural context of the medieval West, revealing ultimately how 'the liturgy imbibed the ideals of crusade such that crusade ideals and aspirations became part of Christian identity'

-- "Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies"

A model demonstration of how the liturgy promoted ecclesiastical goals, and how the technical, seemingly intractable, medieval liturgy can be made accessible to historians.... Comprehensive, convincing, and successful.

-- "H-France Review"

Gaposchkin delivers her argument not only with historical exactitude and ingenuity, but also with the care of a seasoned educator.... Gaposchkin's work stands at the top of crusade studies. Her work will strengthen the syllabi of seminars dedicated to liturgical history, especially of the medieval and crusading periods, and associated reading lists for doctoral students.

-- "Homiletic"

In this exceptionally learned, well-written, and important monograph, Gaposchkin makes a singular contribution to not one but two fields: liturgical studies and crusades history.... This is a monumental work deserving the attention of every medievalist.

-- "Church History"

The intricate web linking thought, expression, and action at the heart of this marvelous book [will surely make it] indispensable for anyone interested in the Crusades as a manifestation of medieval religious culture.

-- "American Historical Review"

This illuminating and detailed book reveals an aspect of crusading that is too easily forgotten--the practice of prayer and its dynamic relationship with the practice of arms--and urges us to remember that medieval Latin Christians were as serious about their faith as they were about their warfare.

-- "Reading Religion"

This is a hardworking and exciting piece of work... that makes an original and impressive contribution to scholarship on the crusades.

-- "The Medieval Review"

From the Publisher

"This illuminating and detailed book reveals an aspect of crusading that is too easily forgotten—the practice of prayer and its dynamic relationship with the practice of arms—and urges us to remember that medieval Latin Christians were as serious about their faith as they were about their warfare."

READING RELIGION

"With alert, exact, meticulous scholarship on an impressively rich array of primary sources, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin reveals the precise liturgical frame behind the origins, shape, and development of crusade ideology across four centuries. This fresh, lucid, compelling, and accessible analysis of complex evidence provides a comprehensive study of how crusading was imagined within the context of wider Christian worship and religious culture. Gaposchkin's forensic study of how ideas on holy war were articulated in regular devotional observance offers access more generally to the public operation of medieval mentalities. Anyone with an interest in crusader studies or in the relationship of formal religious practice with the aspirations of popular faith will benefit from engaging with this significant contribution."

Christopher Tyerman

"This is a fundamental book. Building on Amnon Linder's pioneering studies, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin reveals with clarity of pen the importance of the Latin Christian liturgy for the crusades. Liturgy provided key notions to warriors even before the First Crusade; it was adapted regionally to the vagaries in time and place of holy war, this over the centuries, all the way to the Ottoman expansion. It expressed and spread, in alternating waves, apocalyptic hopes, disappointments, the mandate of reform and purification. Critically, the book makes clear how the liturgy transmitted to European culture at large clerical notions of Sacred History, divine will, vengeance, penance, and necessary reform, and so made the crusade a total cultural form, impacting and involving all Western and Central Europeans."

Philippe Buc

"M. Cecilia Gaposchkin's new book represents the cutting edge of modern crusade studies. It establishes liturgy as a defining force of medieval crusading, its practice, and its ideology."

Christoph T. Maier

"In this tremendously engaging and important book, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin deftly reveals the centrality of liturgical ideas and practices to the crusading movement. In clear and convincing style she takes us through the evolution of crusading ideology and then links developments in liturgical texts and practices with the broader narrative of crusading history. In her accessible and impressive use of these often-neglected materials, she convincingly demonstrates how these 'invisible weapons' formed yet another dimension of crusading's impact on the people of western Europe."

Jonathan Phillips

"In Invisible Weapons, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin draws together two highly technical, specialized fields—crusades studies and liturgical studies. Her use of unpublished manuscript materials provides a great service to students of the crusade. For liturgists, Invisible Weapons will prove to be similarly useful and provocative, casting light on how church ceremonies evolved and adapted to specific historical circumstances."

Jay Rubenstein