In recent years, the legacy and memory of the Crusades have emerged as a promising new subfield within the scholarly literature. The Crusades are arguably among the few events of medieval history that feature prominently in the historical consciousness of not only professional historians, but also several modern nation states, religions and within popular culture. Over the centuries since the first medieval chronicles of the Frankish conquests in the Levant were written, multiple divergent and often incompatible interpretations of the Crusades have developed. The edited volume at hand aims to provide an overview of contemporary international discourse on the subject for both students and researchers. It assembles 27 current perspectives of academics on the role of the Crusades in the historical culture of their respective countries.
The volume starts with an introduction written by the editors (p. 1–10) which presents the historiographic-theoretical foundations of the book. Building on the work of the American philosopher of history Arthur C. Danto and the German historian and theorist Jörn Rüsen, the authors argue that history is not simply to be equated with the past, but is always tied to the attribution of meaning in the present. Therefore, history is always a selection of certain aspects of the past that are highlighted through contemporary religious, political or cultural values and thus are necessarily multi-perspectivist. However, according to Rüsen, this insight does not imply a total relativism that equates scientific historiography with all other institutions that take part in historical culture. On the contrary, it clarifies the task of a good scholar, which consists of leveling criticism and testing the plausibility of various narratives (p. 15). The editors succeed in explaining this rather dense, theoretical matter in an accessible way. A vivid example from the memories of Holocaust survivor Joel König, who was taught three strongly divergent versions of Crusade history in Jewish religious education, public schools in the Weimar Republic and public schools under National Socialism, serves well to connect the theoretical considerations to the concrete topic of the book (p. 1–2). This example also clearly illustrates the efforts by the editors, both of whom are professors of the didactics of history, to show the role of medieval themes in the narrative of historical education in public schools, which in Germany currently focuses strongly on the 20th century.
In accordance with Rüsen’s definition of the task of professional history, all of the following 27 short national perspectives (p. 21–97) are written by academics and not by other actors within the discourse of public history, e.g. politicians or school teachers. The contributions geographically cover all of Europe, including Eastern and Northern perspectives, as well as the US and the Middle East. Thematically, the authors cover both the high medieval Crusades to the Levante as well as the inner-European Crusades and the late Middle Ages. Notably absent is a perspective from the Czech Republic, whose historical territory was an important theater of holy war in the 15th century. There is a lot to be learned from each contributed piece. However, it must be noted that one piece in particular by Russian historian Vardan Bagdarsarjan seems to lack any critical distance to the historical culture described. This author describes Crusading as an ongoing Western project of world domination that today is carried out not by Catholics but by Western, American secularists against the brave resistance of Eastern Orthodoxy and the Islamic World (p. 26–28). Russia, in Bagdarsarjan’s view, is “objectively” (sic!, p. 26) an alternative to this neo-crusading totalitarianism. This is stated in great detail not as an analysis of a contemporary Russian narrative but as a matter of fact. Given recent political developments, the reader cannot help but wonder what role such portrayals of the relationship between Russia and the West might play in the propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine.
The editors summarize the national perspectives in a short chapter that mainly focuses on the alterity of the different versions of Crusade history.
The book closes with a chapter (p. 119–133) that contains methodological suggestions for working with its content at school and university level. The editors provide some problem-oriented leading questions for lessons. They suggest a comparative approach which makes the pupils and students aware of their own particular perspective within a globalized world and raises their consciousness for the constructed nature of history, but also enables them to criticize narratives via the use of primary sources.
Overall, this book is a great resource for anyone who is interested in the intersection of Crusade history, public history and the memory of the Middle Ages in contemporary culture. It also provides very accessible introduction to constructivist philosophy of history. That being said, the lessons to be learned from this school of thought need to be critically applied to some of the book’s own content, as the editor’s choice to accept Bagdarsarjan’s contribution without any revisions clearly shows.