The Arts in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

Abstract

In I883 Prutz published his lengthy Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzziige. Since Wilken's pioneer work in 1807, the history of the crusades and the mediaeval Levant had been industriously rewritten. Michaud had added the full romantic flavour and further study of the Arab authorities, Heyd had defined the economic background in his Geschichte des Levantehandels. Prutz sought to add an exhaustive account of the thought and manners of the Latin kingdom, and his book is an interesting example of the methods of his time. The greater part of it is concerned with a comparative examination of Christianity and Mohammedanism as the background of the two civilizations, and the effect of such differing premises on the general structure of society. He saw clearly some of the points where crusader and Arab most misconceived one another, and he searched the written evidence skilfully for examples. The visual arts receive only a brief treatment. The scheme of the book had taken form when Prutz was attacking a fantastic attempt to find Barbarossa's bones in Tyre, and he was sceptical about archaeological results and the attribution of dates and authorship to Syrian ruins. The mind of man as reflected in his handicraft was still in 1883 a comparatively obscure subject of study, and one which a Kulturgeschichte could deal with in some twenty pages out of its quota of six hundred and forty two. De Vogifi had published in I86o his Eglises de la Terre Sainte and Rey in 1871 his Architecture Militaire des Croises en Syrie, books which mark the transition from travellers' accounts to systematic investigation; but photography had not as yet developed sufficiently to provide readily filed data; and much of the evidence was still inaccessible, forbidden to Christians as was the Haram El-Khalil at Hebron, or dangerously remote and brigand-infested. Even under these conditions much valuable work was done in the early years of this century,1 but it was not till the French and British mandates were established that