Lecture: Italians and the Crusader States

Italians and the Crusader States

Heather Crowley will take a close look at the role of Italians in the crusader states of the eastern Mediterranean during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. She  will examine the Italian presence and influence in coastal cities and their hinterlands during the period, as well as evidence for the Italian impact on everyday life. Particular attention will be drawn to the importance of the maritime relationship that linked the medieval Italian city-states with the various polities in Frankish east, especially those related to trade and pilgrimage.

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Heather Crowley is an Associate Instructor in the Art History Department at Cabrillo College. She completed her PhD in History at Cardiff University (UK) in 2017 and her current research focuses on the settlements and physical landscape of the medieval eastern Mediterranean during the period of the crusades. This recent research on the historical environment is the basis of Heather Crowley's most recent publication, "A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey? Agrarian Environments in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem" in Jessalynn L. Bird and Elizabeth Lapina's volume, The Crusades and Nature: Natural and Supernatural Environments in the Middle Ages (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2024).

Image:

Caption: Pietro Vesconte, Map of medieval Acre showing the Pisan, Venetian, and Genoese city quarters. In Marino Sanudo the Elder, Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis, c. 1321–1324 CE, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 190, fol. 207r. Photo @ Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. CC-BY-NC 4.0. 

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