Iris Shagrir

This book examines the premodern encounter between the three monotheistic religions through the unique prism of a premodern literary work—The Parable of the Three Rings—a poignant and charming tale of a father who had three sons and one precious ring. By tradition he was to bequeath the ring to his heir, but he loved his three sons equally — so he had two new rings made, crafted to be indistinguishable from the original, and on his deathbed gave a ring to each son. The narrator explains that the father is God, and his sons are the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims, each believing themselves to be the sole upholders of the true religion. A historical and literary study, the book offers a comprehensive discussion of the various guises of the Parable, from the early Middle Ages onwards, and highlights its capacity to reflect openness and pluralism in the interfaith encounter.

The Parable of the Three Rings and the Idea of Religious Toleration in European Culture

Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith

Roni Ellenblum

In the last thirty-five years B.Z. Kedar has become a leading historian of the field of the crusades, and of medieval and Middle Eastern history more broadly. This volume presents 31 essays written by eminent medievalists in appreciation of Kedar's talent, method and diversity. The collection relates to the Latin East and to the reciprocity between West and East in the time of the crusades. The individual essays deal with the history, archaeology and art of the Holy Land, the crusades and the military orders, Mediterranean commerce, medieval mentality, and the Jews.

In Laudem Hierosolymitani

Cecilia Gaposchkin

Examining liturgy as historical evidence has, in recent years, developed into a flourishing field of research. The chapters in this volume offer innovative discussion of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem from the perspective of 'liturgy in history'. They demonstrate how the total liturgical experience, which was visual, emotional, motile, olfactory, and aural, can be analysed to understand the messages that liturgy was intended to convey. The chapters reveal how combining narrative sources with liturgical documents can help decode political circumstances and inter-group relations and decipher the core ideals of the community of Outremer. Moreover, understanding the Latins’ liturgical activities in the Holy Land has much to contribute to our understanding of the crusade as an institution, how crusade spirituality was practised on the ground in the Latin East, and how people engaged with the crusading movement. This volume brings together eight original studies, forwarded by the editors’ introduction, on the liturgy of Jerusalem, spanning the immediate pre-Crusade and Crusade period (11th-13th centuries). It demonstrates the richness of a focus on the liturgy in illuminating the social, religious, and intellectual history of this critical period of ecclesiastical self-assertion, as well as conceptions of the sacred in this time and place. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History.

Liturgy and Devotion in the Crusader States

Anthroponymy, or the study of personal names, is used here to investigate the extent to which Frankish settlers in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem assimilated the practices and traditions of their hosts. Data from legal and commercial documents has been used to create a database of 6,200 individual names from the years 1099 to 1291 which the author analyses for any trends and patterns that may relate to social change. Comparing evidence with contemporary Catholic Europe, Shagrir finds that the Franks neither adopted local ways nor maintained their own traditions, but changes in naming reflected a unique set of characteristics influenced by eastern contacts, cults and customs and a greater awareness of religious fervour.

Iris Shagrir

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