Perceptions of Crusading in the Mid-Fourteenth Century: The Evidence of Three Texts

Assessing the popularity of crusading becomes more difficult from the mid-thirteenth century, when the age of the great passagia drew to a close. In the Europe of the 1340s and 1350s, embattled by warfare, plague, and economic collapse, it would seem logical to assume that the call to crusade had lost any appeal; yet we know that at the end of the century a significant revival of enthusiasm occurred. Part of the problem is that we possess few sources that reflect reactions to crusading in the 1340s and 1350s. The author examines three texts written during these decades that comment on crusading from very different perspectives: Geoffroi de Charny’s Livre de chevalerie (ca. 1352), Jean de Roquetaillade’s Liber secretorum eventuum (1349), and John Mandeville’s Travels (ca. 1356). He concludes that they reveal a remarkably similar approach. The activity of crusading was viewed in a wholly positive light, but it was seen as the outcome of a process of upheaval, one that would involve at best thoroughgoing ref...