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Crusading Proposals in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

A. R. Leopold
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Extract

One of the striking features of crusading in the aftermath of the fall of Acre (1291) was the sudden profusion of treatises written to offer advice on how the Holy Land could be recovered. In the years between 1290 and 1335, around thirty such proposals were written containing often detailed information about the Mamluks and practical recommendations on how they could be defeated and expelled from the holy places. This practicality distinguishes the ‘recovery treatises’ from other crusading literature. Prior to this period, non-descriptive writing on the crusades tended to be theological, dealing with the justification of crusading or the morals of participants. After the brief flurry of proposals written in the decades prior to 1335, similar works were rare until the treatises outlining plans for crusades against the Ottomans written in the mid-fifteenth century by such authors as John Torzelo and James Tedaldi. However, a few new proposals dealing with the crusade to the Holy Land were written during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. This is striking, given the great obstacles posed to such a crusade by the twin scourges of war and plague in Europe, and the greater immediacy of the Ottoman threat. It is possible that these later works were influenced by recovery treatises written between 1290 and 1335, since some of the latter survive in copies made during the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries which were held in European libraries, notably that of the dukes of Burgundy. These copies, and the new treatises on the subject, illustrate that the idea of a crusade to recover Jerusalem continued to exert an appeal on later generations at certain times during the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 36: The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History , 2000 , pp. 216 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2000

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References

1 I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Alan Forey and Dr Len Scales for their comments on a draft version of this paper.

2 The contents of these works have been the subject of a number of studies, including: Atiya, A. S., The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1938)Google Scholar; Roulx, J. Delaville le, La France en Orient au XlVe siècle: expéditions du maréchal Boucicaut, 2 vols (Paris, 1913)Google Scholar; Schein, S., Fideles Crucis (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar; A. R. Leopold, ‘Crusading proposals of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries’ (Durham Ph.D. thesis, 1998).

3 Housley, N., ‘Pope Clement V and the crusades of 1309-10’, JMedH, 8 (1982), pp. 29–43.Google Scholar

4 Registres de Nicolas IV, ed. E. Langlois, 2 vols (Paris, 1886-93), nos 6791-5; Regestum Clementis Papae V, ed. monachi ordinis S. Benedicti, 8 vols (1885-92), nos 3626-7.

5 Fidenzio of Padua, ‘Liber recuperationis Terre Sánete’, ed. G. Golubovich, Biblioteca bio bibliografica della Terra Santa, 2 (Quaracchi, 1913), p. 9; Regestum dementis Papae V, no. 1033.

6 Both the anonymous Directorium ad passagium faciendum (printed in RHC.Arm, 2, pp. 367-517) and the Texaurus regis Francie by Guy of Vigevano (BN, MS lat. 11015, fols 32r-54v) were written in response to Philip VI’s preparations in the 1330s, while an English Hospitaller, Roger of Stanegrave, wrote a treatise for Edward III when he agreed to join the planned crusade (BL, MS Cotton Otho D V, fols 1r-15r).

7 Philip of Mézières, Le Songe du vieil pèlerin, ed. G. W. Coopland, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1969); idem, Letter to King Richard II: a Plea made in 1395 for Peace between England and France, ed. G. W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1975).

8 The crusade to Smyrna (1343-4) was called in response to Venetian, Cypriot, and Hospitaller fears about the rising power of the Turks; Peter I’s crusade to Cyprus (1365) has been viewed as economically motivated; and the Mahdia crusade (1390) was intended by the Genoese to combat piracy in North Africa: Lemerle, P., L’Emirat d’Aydin, Byzance et l’occident: Recherches sur ‘La Geste d’Vmur Pacha’ (Paris, 1957), pp. 181–5 Google Scholar; Edbury, P., The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 161–71 Google Scholar; Setton, K. M., The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571), Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 114, 127, 161–2 (Philadelphia, PA, 1976), 1, pp. 260–74.Google Scholar

9 The decision to attack Smyrna was taken only after the naval league formed, and it appears that Peter I decided on an attack on Alexandria himself: Lemerle, L’Emirat d’Aydin, pp. 181–5; Edbury, Kingdom of Cyprus, pp. 164-7.

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13 ‘Le pèlerinage du moine augustin Jacques de Vérone’, pp. 224, 239-40, 250-1, 302. Similar sentiments are found at the opening of John Mandeville’s Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour (Oxford, 1967), pp. 1-4.

14 For example, Galvano of Levanto’s treatise, addressed to the French king, survives in only one manuscript, but a lost copy is recorded in the papal library from 1295: C. Kohler, ‘Un traité du recouvrement de la Terre Sainte’, ROL, 6 (1898), p. 355.

15 Madre, A., introduction to the Liber de fine, in Raimundi Lulli Opera latina, tomus LX, ed. Madre, A., CChr.CM, 35 (Turnhout, 1981), pp. 241–2, 248 Google Scholar; Hillgarth, J. N., Ramon Lull and Lullism in Fourteenth-Century France (Oxford, 1971), pp. 245–6, 394–5.Google Scholar

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17 BN, MS lat. 7470; Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 1654.

18 BL, MS Add. 19513, fols 67-84V.

19 Kohler, introduction to RHC.Arm, 2, pp. lxviii-cxxx (which also details manuscripts that are no longer extant).

20 BL, MS Cotton Otho D V, fols 69V-87V.

21 Examples include Berne, Bibliothèque de la ville, MS 12$, fols 219V-254V; CUL, MS Dd.1.17, pp. 421-51; BL, MS Harley 5115, fols 47V-86V.

22 Kohler, introduction to RHC.Arm, 2, p. cxx: BL, MS Royal 18.B.xxvi, fols 143-228V; Madrid, Escurial, MS Z.I.2, fols 1-57, which also includes a translation of Marco Polo. The advent of printing saw sixteenth-century editions in French, English, German, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish.

23 Luttrell, A., ‘Greek histories translated and copied for Juan Fernández de Heredia, Master of Rhodes; 1377-1396’, Speculum, 35 (1960), pp. 401–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Ehrle, F., Historia bibliothecae romanorum pontificum turn Bonifatianae turn Avenionensis enarrata, tomus I (Rome, 1890), pp. 337, 343, 345, 407 Google Scholar (nos 648, 731, 752, 1651); Torsello, Marino Sanudo, ‘Liber secretorum fidelium crucis’, ed. Bongars, J., Gesta Dei per Francos, 2 vols (Hanover, 1611), 2, p. 1.Google Scholar

25 Ehrle, Historia bibliothecae romanorum pontificum, pp. 500-5, 509, 546, 557-8 (nos 680-2, 690, 741, 766, 831, 1428-9, 1625, 1631).

26 Vaughan, R., Philip the Bold: the Formation of the Burgundian State (London, 1962), pp. 59–68 Google Scholar; Atiya, A. S., The Crusade of Nicopolis (London, 1934), pp. 33–49 Google Scholar; Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1, pp. 342-6.

27 Piloti, Emmanuel, Traile d’Emmanuel Piloti sur le passage en Terre Sainte (1420), ed. Dopp, P.-H., Publications de l’Université Lovanium de Léopoldville (Louvain, 1958), p. ix.Google Scholar

28 Vaughan, Philip the Bold, pp. 194-5. Kohler dates the purchase to 1401 (introduction to RHC.Arm, 2, pp. lxxxvii-lxxxviii, n.4).

29 Kohler, introduction to RHC.Arm, 2, pp. lxxxviii-lxxxix, xci-xcii: BN, MS n.acq. fr. 1255; BN, MS fr. 2810.

30 Vaughan, R., Philip the Good: the Apogee of Burgundy (London, 1970), pp. 268–73.Google Scholar

31 Schefer, C., ‘La discours du voyage d’outremer au très victorieux roi Charles VII, prononcé, en 1452, par Jean Germain, évêque de Chalon’, ROL 3 (1895), pp. 303–42.Google Scholar

32 Traité d’Emmanuel Piloti, pp. ix-x.

33 Iorga, N., Philippe de Mézières 1327-1405 et la croisade au XlVe siècle (Paris, 1896), pp. 344–52 Google Scholar; Atiya, Crusade in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 139-42.

34 Philip of Mézières, Le Songe du vieil pèlerin, 2, pp. 92-103, 422-40; Iorga, Philippe de Mézières, pp. 468-71.

35 Philip of Mézières, Letter to Richard II.

36 Palmer, J. J. N., England, France and Christendom, 1377-99 (London, 1972), pp. 187–8.Google Scholar

37 Philip of Mézières, Le Songe du vieil pèlerin, 2, pp. 434-5; Ramon Lull, ‘Liber de acquisitione Terrae Sanctae’, ed. in P. Longpré, ‘Le Liber de Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae du bienheureux Raymond Lulle’, Criterion, 3 (1927), pp. 269-70; ‘Directorium’, RHC.Arm, 2, pp. 414-19; Fidenzio of Padua, ‘Liber recuperationis Terre Sánete’, pp. 51-2.

38 Philip of Mézières, Le Songe du vieil pèlerin, 2, pp. 292-5, 422-9; ‘Directorium’, RHC-Arm, 2, pp. 402-3; Charles II of Sicily, ‘Le conseil du Roi Charles’, ed. G. I. Bratianu, Revue Historique du Sud-Est Européen, 19 (1942), pp. 356-8; ‘Memoria Terre Sánete’, ed. C. Kohler in ‘Deux projets de croisade en Terre Sainte’, ROL, 10 (1903-4), pp. 440-6.

39 Iorga, Philippe de Mézières, p. 71.

40 Traité d’Emmanuel Piloti, pp. xviii-xxi. See also A. Luttrell, ‘Emmanuele Piloti and criticism of the Knights Hospitallers of Rhodes, 1306-1444’, Annales de l’Ordre Souverain Militaire de Malte, 20 (1962), pp. 11-12 (also in idem, The Hospitallers in Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece and the West 1291-1444 (London, 1978), ch. XXIV); Atiya, Crusade in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 208-12.

41 Traité d’Emmanuel Piloti, pp. v-vi, 3.

42 Ibid., p. 92.

43 Ibid., pp. 160-4.

44 Ibid., pp. 116-20, 128-34, 176-8. Piloti’s treatise is confused, and the advice on the crusade is interspersed with digressions on the decadence of Famagusta (blamed on Genoese occupation), commerce in Alexandria, and a comparison between the sultan’s court in Cairo and the papal Curia (to the detriment of the latter). Piloti had acted on behalf of Venetian merchants in Egypt, and took a pro-Venetian stance in his work, just as Sanudo did in the Liber secretorum.

45 Traité d’Emmanuel Piloti, p. 223.

46 Sanudo, ‘Liber secretorum’, pp. 37-95.

47 ‘Pariso’ for the sea near Egypt, ‘Sturion’ for one branch of the Nile (Traité d’Emmanuel Piloti, pp. 71-2, 177 and n.b; Sanudo, ‘Liber secretorum’, pp. 25, 37, 57, 69, 259).

48 Traite d’Emmanuel Piloti, pp. 7-14, 171-2, 183-8. These subjects are discussed by theorists such as Ramon Lull, Charles II of Anjou, Pierre Dubois, Fulk of Villaret, and William Adam.

49 Oeuvres de Ghillebert de Lannoy: voyageur, diplomate et moraliste, ed. C. Potvin with notes by J.-C. Houzeau (Louvain, 1878), p. 51: ‘emprins le voyaige de Jhérusalem par terre à la requeste du roy d’Angleterre et du roy de France et de monseigneur le duc Phillippe, principal esmouveur’.

50 Ibid., pp. 99-118 (Alexandria and Cairo), 119-21 (the army), 123-35 (the Nile and Damietta).

51 Oeuvres de Ghillebert de Lannoy: voyageur, diplomate et moraliste, pp. 139-59 (Jerusalem, Damascus, and the Syrian ports), 160-1 (Gallipoli).

52 Le voyage d’Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquière, ed. C. Schefer, Recueil de voyages et de documents pour servir à l’histoire de la géographie, 12 (Paris, 1892); T. Wright, Early Travels in Palestine (London, 1848), pp. 283-382, gives an English translation. See also Atiya, Crusade in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 190-202; Vaughan, Philip the Good, pp. 268-73.

53 Le voyage d’Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquière, p. 1.

54 Ibid., pp. 2-167.

55 Ibid., pp. 263-74.

56 Kohler, introduction to RHC.Arm, 2, pp. clxv, clxxi-clxxvi: Brussels, Bibliothèque royale, MSS 9095, 9176-7; Paris, Arsenal, MS 4798; BN, MSS fr. 5593, 9087.

57 Le voyage d’Outremer de Berlrandon de la Broquière, pp. vi, lxxv-lxxvi.