2 - Eastern Mediterranean and the Holy Land

Summary

In 1319 the noted crusade enthusiast and former companion of Edward I, Sir Otto Grandson, finally retired from political life, making the gloomy prediction that the general passagium to the Holy Land appeared unlikely to embark in the near future. Close to the royal courts of England and France, he was well placed to judge, and installing a large part of his seignorial treasure at the papal camera, over 20,000 gold florins, Grandson redeemed his crusade vow. Wider expectations were more robust. Throughout the fourteenth century the allure of the partes de terra sancta, an area roughly corresponding with the coastal strip of northern Syria and Palestine but also bridging the region of the Nile delta, continued to inspire military dreaming of the most ardent sort. It spawned very muddled but potent notions of politics and events. Against periodic rumours of mammoth Christian success and sudden Muslim collapse, Latin rule conducted a piecemeal retreat, becoming eventually reduced to a clutch of island dependencies in the Aegean and the kingdom of Cyprus. By the 1370s war-torn Constantinople and Armenia were the political remnants of eastern Christendom. Prophecy, Jerusalem-centric piety and honoured military tradition gave the greatly diversified frontier a straightforward significance, however. In 1364, according to the Evesham chronicler, all the rulers of the infidel world (the sultan of Egypt; the ‘kings’ of Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia and Lithuania; the Tartars; and the king of north Africa and Spain) converged on the border of Armenia to fight a Christian host led partly by the Knights Hospitaller and a small band of western knights and ‘pilgrims’.