Research at the Chair for Medieval History (Jaspert) Regular Canons within Crusader Society
The project
Project management:
- Prof. Dr. Nikolas Jaspert
- Wolf Zöller, M.A.
Project description:
The research project “Regular Canons within Crusader Society: Clerical Power, Spatial Influence and Transmediterranean Connectivity”, funded by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development over three years (2011-2013), is dedicated to the most comprehensive historical-archaeological investigation of the regular canonical communities of the Crusader dominions.
The Augustinian canon communities of the Holy Land had far-reaching and diverse tasks within the society of the Crusader dominions: they watched over and performed divine service at the holiest sites of Christendom, performed the liturgy and pastoral care for thousands of pilgrims, assumed the highest ecclesiastical offices of the Latin East as bishops and patriarchs and served in the administration of dioceses or even the kingdom. Due to this important position, the communities received rich donations and grants in the form of privileges, monetary income and land ownership, not only in the Latin East, but also in Latin Europe, from Poland to the Iberian Peninsula and from the British Isles to Sicily.
Thanks to their extensive estates and their economic potential, the canons also played an important role in the processes of land and urban development in the Crusader dominions, which is why they left lasting topographical and architectural traces in the urban centers and the rural hinterland of Syria-Palestine.
Despite this importance for the Latin dominions of the high medieval Levant, which can hardly be overestimated, there has been no thorough academic analysis of the history of these regular canonical communities.
The research project based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (project leader Ronnie Ellenblum, project assistant Anna Gutgarts-Weinberger) and at the Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg (project leader Nikolas Jaspert, project assistant Wolf Zöller) aims to fill this research gap in close cooperation and by means of a transdisciplinary archaeological-geographical-(art)historical approach. The complementary analysis of both written and material evidence on the history of the canons promises extensive results that can convey a multifaceted picture of the canonical communities of the Latin East.
