Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Historiographically the origins of the modern study of Crusader architecture and art can be located in French scholarship during the nineteenth century. The beginnings of the modern European rediscovery of Syria-Palestine are associated with the scholars who followed Napoleon's campaigns in the Near East from May 1798 to August 1799. Shortly thereafter, J. F. Michaud began the publication of his Histoire des croisades , starting in 1812, drawing attention to the history of the Crusaders in the Levant. Study of the material culture of the Crusaders was begun in terms of coinage, and the first attempt at a comprehensive study appeared in 1847 by Louis Felicien de Saulcy. Interest in the Crusaders was indirectly intensified in France during the Crimean War (1853–6), in which one of the major issues was French protection of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem and the holy sites under the Capitulations of 1620 and 1740, firmans signed by the Ottoman sultan. Four years later, in 1860, the count Charles-Jean-Melchior de Vogüé (1829–1916), published a pioneering study entitled Les Eglises de la terre sainte . This book marked the beginning of modern research into the art and architecture of the Crusaders in the Holy Land. De Vogüé approached the study of Crusader churches as the work of French architects who produced buildings in three phases: phase 1, from 1099 to 1187; phase 2, ... log in or subscribe to read full text