Papers by Christopher MacEvitt
Baldwin of Boulogne was acclaimed the ruler by a rebellious faction of the population, it had van... more Baldwin of Boulogne was acclaimed the ruler by a rebellious faction of the population, it had vanished by 1150, when its remaining lands passed to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus. The brevity of the county's existence, however, is belied by its long afterlife among Eastern Christian communities.
The Martyrdom of the Franciscans: Islam, the Papacy, and an Order in Conflict
Journal of Medieval History, 2017
ABSTRACT Twelfth-century narrative accounts in Armenian, Syriac and Latin recount a number of pro... more ABSTRACT Twelfth-century narrative accounts in Armenian, Syriac and Latin recount a number of processions in Syria and Palestine in which both Eastern Christians and Latins participated. Processions were one of the many ways by which the Franks expressed their political dominance over the urban (and likely also the rural) landscape, but it was also a way that all Christian communities used to express and even construct relationships among themselves. Scholars often assume that the procession performs (in a Durkheimian sense) the work of creating or displaying unity. Yet the scattered sources of the twelfth-century Frankish Levant suggest that this is only one of the functions an inter-confessional procession can play. As common were processions that delimited, separated and hierarchised communities.
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom, 2020
Journal of Medieval History, 2014
For Christians of Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, the First Crusade and subsequent settlements ... more For Christians of Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, the First Crusade and subsequent settlements brought confusion to the political and theological order of the world. Previously, the world existed as a stable balance between two divinely established forces: the divinely established empire of the Romans (the Byzantines), and the empire of the Muslims, equally established by divine providence, but intended to serve as the hammer with which God punished errant Christians. Western Christians (Franks) were peripheral to this world; at the time of the First Crusade, the Franks were commonly perceived as Byzantine mercenaries. After the Franks conquered Jerusalem, the city central to providential history, Armenians and Jacobites began to ask: who were the true Romans? The term in both Armenian and Syriac texts began to be applied to the Franks instead of the Byzantines, particularly in apocalyptic and providential schemes of history.
Al-Masāq, 2018
When William, the Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem, wrote his chroni... more When William, the Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem, wrote his chronicles in the late twelfth century, a word for crusade had not yet been created. But William knew what he was writing about. He was shaping the memory among Latin Christians in both the Levant and Western Europe of “the brave men who went out from the kingdoms of the West”. From the late twelfth century to the mid-twentieth, this has been a fair description of scholarship on the Crusades as well; it focused largely on manly military deeds, and the field of operations was fixed on Jerusalem and the Levant, with brief forays to Constantinople, Egypt and Tunis. But William was also writing a history of his homeland, the kingdom of Jerusalem, and his account presented a beguiling model of history that intermingled the alternately glorious and disastrous narrative of the military campaigns to liberate and defend Jerusalem with the history of the kingdom itself. This fusion was not accidental, nor without consequences. William of Tyre sought to ensure that Western Europe would remain engaged in the defence of Jerusalem, and his chronicle was an extended plea for assistance in the face of the growing strength of S alāh al-Dīn. But William was also the author of a history of Islamic rule in the Levant, which he composed alongside his history of the kingdom as a parallel and a prelude. While this history has not survived, it suggests a dual perspective that has been lost in modern historiography, a sense that William saw his own history—he was born in Syria—as both a part of crusading which began in Latin Europe and also as a part of Near Eastern history
Journal of Medieval Worlds
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 2007
The Catholic Historical Review, 2010
History of Religions, 2015
European Cultural Encounters, c. 1000 - c. 1750, 2009
Catholic Historical Review, 2011
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2010
Catholic Historical Review, 2010
European Cultural Encounters, c. 1000 - c. 1750, 2009
Journal of Medieval History, 2017
Twelfth-century narrative accounts in Armenian, Syriac and Latin recount a number of processions ... more Twelfth-century narrative accounts in Armenian, Syriac and Latin recount a number of processions in Syria and Palestine in which both Eastern Christians and Latins participated. Processions were one of the many ways by which the Franks expressed their political dominance over the urban (and likely also the rural) landscape, but it was also a way that all Christian communities used to express and even construct relationships among themselves. Scholars often assume that the procession performs (in a Durkheimian sense) the work of creating or displaying unity. Yet the scattered sources of the twelfth-century Frankish Levant suggest that this is only one of the functions an inter-confessional procession can play. As common were processions that delimited, separated and hierarchised communities.
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Papers by Christopher MacEvitt