In the Middle Ages, religious crusaders took up arms, prayed, bade
farewell to their families, and marched off to fight in holy wars. These
Christian soldiers also created accounts of their lives in lyric poetry,
putting words to the experience of personal sacrifice and the pious
struggle associated with holy war. The crusaders affirmed their
commitment to fighting to claim a distant land while revealing their
feelings as they left behind their loved ones, homes, and earthly
duties. Their poems and related visual works offer us insight into the
crusaders' lives and values at the boundaries of earthly and spiritual
duties, body and soul, holy devotion and courtly love.
In The Subject of Crusade, Marisa Galvez offers a nuanced view of holy
war and crusade poetry, reading these lyric works within a wider
conversation with religion and culture. Arguing for an interdisciplinary
treatment of crusade lyric, she shows how such poems are crucial for
understanding the crusades as a complex cultural and historical
phenomenon. Placing them in conversation with chronicles, knightly
handbooks, artworks, and confessional and pastoral texts, she identifies
a particular "crusade idiom" that emerged out of the conflict between
pious and earthly duties. Galvez fashions an expanded understanding of
the creative works made by crusaders to reveal their experiences,
desires, ideologies, and reasons for taking up the cross.
