Cross Cultural Convergence in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday ed. by Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache and Sylvia Schein (review)

774book reviews Cross Cultural Convergence in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Edited by Michael Goodich, Sophia Menache and Sylvia Schein. (NewYork: Peter Lang. 1995. Pp. xxvii, 334. $69.95.) Cross Cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period brings together sixteen papers by Israeli, British, French, and Italian scholars on a misceUany of subjects related mainly, but not exclusively—H. E. J. Cowdrey's study, "Peter, Monk ofMolesme and Prior ofJuUy"throws new light upon early Cistercian history —to crusading and to intercultural contacts. Apart from the obvious predominance of these two themes, however, the volume lacks thematic unity and the reader wiU be hard-pressed to know where to start.This notable deficiency is underscored further by the absence of an introduction and index, by the pecuUar arrangement of the papers alphabeticaUy according to the names of the authors, and by the appallingly uneven standards of editing.To derive the best of this book, the reader must determine his/her own agenda. A good start can be made with the papers devoted to aspects of crusading and the Military Orders. These include studies by Elizabeth A. R. Brown ("A Sixteenth-Century Defense of Saint Louis' Crusades: Etienne le Blanc and the Legacy of Louis IX"),Jean Richard ("Le siège de Damas dans l'histoUe et dans la légende"), Sophia Menache ("Rewriting the History of the Templars according to Matthew Paris"), Joshua Prawer ("The Venetians in Crusader Acre"), and Sylvia Schein ("The Miracula of the Hospital of St. John and the Carmelite EUantic Tradition—Two Medieval Myths of Foundation?"). Of crucial importance , however, are the studies by David Abulafia ("Trade and Crusade, 1050-1250") and Jonathan RUey-Smith ("Early Crusaders to the East and the Costs of Crusading, 1095-1130") of economic aspects of crusading.Addressing the problem of the causal relationship between trade and crusade, Abulafia argues convincingly that the crusades did not revolutionize European trading patterns in the eastern Mediterranean, as many have supposed, but "marked only a further stage in the existing process of commercial expansion" (p. 1). For RUeySmith , economic issues are tied closely to the problem ofcrusaders' motivation. Using the evidence of monastic and cathedral cartularies, he demonstrates that the widely-held perceptions of crusading as a colonizing enterprise and an opportunity for personal enrichment are untenable. Crusading was not merely expensive ; it often brought financial ruin to a crusader's family.Whatever motives prompted men to take the cross, they were not, as RUey-Smith's evidence clearly shows, informed by expectations of personal gain. The second theme, intercultural contacts, offers a similarly broad range of studies. Papers by Franco Cardini ("Note per una preistoria deU'esotismo nella Firenze medievale"),Yvonne Friedman ("Women in Captivity and their Ransom during the Crusader Period"), Michael Goodich ("A Chapter in the History of the Christian Theology of Miracle: Engelbert of Admont's (ca. 1250-1331) Expositio super Psalmum and De miraculis Christi"), Jeannine Horowitz ("Quand les Champenois parlaient le Grec: La Morée franque au XIIF siècle, un book reviews775 bouillon de culture"), Elena Lourie ("Cultic Dancing and Courtly Love:Jews and Popular Culture in Fourteenth Century Aragon and Valencia"), Avrom Saltman ("Barcelona Cathedral MS 64 and the Hebraica Veritas"), Joseph ShatzmiUer ("Jewish Converts to Christianity in Medieval Europe 1200-1500"), and Kenneth R. Stow ("By Land or SeaThe Passage of the Kalonymides to the Rhineland in the Tenth Century") treat such diverse topics as the impact of Islam upon Florentine culture, the experiences of female prisoners ofwar in Palestine, antiJewish elements in Catholic theology and exegesis, the HeUenization of the Champenois settlers in the Péloponnèse, the trans-Alpine route foUowed by Jewish travelers, and the deeply ambiguous relations between Catholic Christians and Jews throughout Europe. What is striking is the readiness with which Catholic Europeans frequently embraced the imaginative and creative elements and impulses of foreign cultures , assimUating and reshaping them to produce a rich cultural hybrid. Cardini , for instance, points out that in Florence, where diverse aspects of Islamic culture were absorbed into Florentine arts and Uterature, the result was nothing less startling than the development of "una nuova cultura" (p. 58). In the...