The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus. Vol. IV: The Cities of Acre and Tyre with Addenda and Corrigenda to Volumes I–III (review)

The present volume concludes an enormous project to publish a corpus of all church buildings in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Reflecting work stretching from 1979 to the present, Denys Pringle has systematically surveyed, recorded, described, and analyzed the archaeological, historical, and architectural evidence for 489 churches together with extensive documentation; by contrast, Camille Enlart included fewer than fifty churches in Les monuments des croisés dans le royaume de Jérusalem: architecture religieuse et civile (Paris, 1925–28). In volume IV, 121 churches are presented, including eighty-two from Acre and twenty-five from Tyre, the two most important port cities in the Latin Kingdom.

The entries for each church provide the fullest possible information, with a number of churches covered here for the first time; up-to-date archaeological details also are featured. Some churches are referred to only in written sources, but all of the churches for which there are archaeological remains are given photo documentation with newly prepared drawings based on careful fieldwork. Major churches receive appropriately large entries (St. John's church and hospital in Acre cover pp. 82–114; the cathedral in Tyre covers pp.182–204). Among the great benefits of Pringle's presentations are his historical discussions based on exhaustive sources along with pre- and postcrusader history. Pringle's command of crusader ecclesiastical history is encyclopedic. For major entries, other material such as epigraphy and relics are discussed, and all entries give complete references for primary sources, maps, and secondary sources.

Pringle covered seventy-one churches in Historic Acre as a Living City (Acre, 2003); here, he documents eighty-two, second only to Jerusalem (with eighty-seven) in the Kingdom. Pringle states that his survey is offered as a further contribution to the development of a more clearly defined picture of medieval Acre. Without a doubt, his contribution marks a gigantic step forward both in terms of his identifications and documentation on the individual churches and his presentation of a reconstruction of medieval Acre overlaid on a map of the modern city (pp. 16–17). By clearly indicating the locations of documented churches and locating tentative sites for others for which no archaeological evidence has yet been found, his map far and away provides the most important attempt to envision the size of the city based on the newest archaeological evidence and the sites of all known churches in relation to other major structures in the thirteenth-century city. For Acre, Pringle uses an eight-digit reference for these site locations based on the Palestine or Old Israel Grid found in the survey of Israel maps. A number of these site locations are estimates, but remarkably well-informed estimates that only future archaeological investigation could confirm. But this map, which appears to have two errors (Hospital of St. Lazarus location; St. Mary Magdalene at 1569.2509 is no. 434, not 435), and the associated entries will be exceptionally useful to every scholar of crusader-era Acre.

The Acre churches occupy the first 175 pages of the volume; pages 177 to 272 include the churches of Tyre. The entry on no. 484, Baituniya, as well as the entries on churches at Bait Jibrin, al-Bira, and Jezreel, are especially noteworthy. Tyre had fewer churches than Acre, of which the cathedral of the Holy Cross is the most important. Pringle's entry is, in effect, a monographic study of this building, which in the thirteenth century was the coronation church of the crusader kings. Today, remains of only two other crusader churches exist in the city.

Pringle's achievement in this volume and the previous three volumes is tremendous and truly admirable. He has provided exhaustive, documented, and perceptively analyzed...