This book is the result of ten years of intense research. The entire project began in 2014 when my mentor Philippe Buc suggested to me a subject for a MA thesis: the exceptional text of Peter of Bloisâ Passio Raginaldi. When analysing this text, I started wondering what genre it might belong to, concluding that the most suitable label would be that of a sermon, precisely a sermon text meant for mobilizing participants in the Third Crusade. I continued with these efforts in my PhD thesis (2014â2019), which was devoted to the preaching of the Third Crusade in general, the basis for this book. I quickly discovered how much preaching material is still out there that has remained hitherto unexploited, and how much this material interacted with the crusade movement, shedding light on corresponding mobilization efforts and contemporary crusade spirituality. Every time I opened a sermon collection, I found material pertinent to the crusading purpose. This is especially true for unpublished material, notably from Parisian collections, including much further material that was not ultimately included in this study. I can therefore only highly recommend that other young scholars searching for an untrodden field in which to distinguish themselves take a look at the vast and rich sermon material of the central Middle Ages. Yet, I shall not conceal that it takes quite some effort and training to familiarize oneself with this material, including time-consuming work with manuscriptsâbut eventually, this endeavor bears copious fruits.
After having consulted numerous sermon collections and manuscripts, I ended up with this book, which examines nine preachers, considers around a hundred manuscripts, and relates 42 sermon texts specifically for the purpose of crusade mobilization. By the end of my PhD (2019), I realized that I had opened the door to such rich source material, that I decided it would be worth spending further time and effort on this subject. I thus devoted a first Postdoc project to an Iberian preacher involved in the Third Crusade, the Augustinian canon Martin of León. The results of this project have now also been fruitfully incorporated into this book; both in terms of specific results deriving from an analysis of Martinâs enormous sermon opus, and in terms of using this case study to develop some essential methodological issues. This has been a worthwhile endeavor that very much informed the final form of my methodological tools. By the end of the same Postdoc project (2023), I once again came to the conclusion that one could well spend some more years on this subject, but I decided, after ten years of genesis, that it is finally time to publish this in a monographic form. I hope that this book can shed light on a whole range of new source material, which challenges the established image of this expedition, notably as to how it was mobilized, but also occasionally as to the course and nature of the expedition itself. Lastly, I think that there is still much potential for bringing sermon material more into the mainstream of historical research (the bulk of scholars who deal with it are theologians or philologists). I am convinced that this material, which has survived in such vast quantities from the medieval period, can contribute much to the understanding of several historical phenomena.
I am grateful to many people for contributing to the genesis of this book, most notably to my PhD advisor Philippe Buc, who was such a devoted teacher and from whom I have learned so much. Without him, I would never have had the academic career that I now pursue. He was always ready to read and comment on my work, picking on me for all my crazy ideas; as he once put it, they are sometimes emanating in all directions like fireworks. Furthermore, I am grateful to David dâAvray who hosted me in London for a semester in 2016 (Institute of Historical Research, University of London) and from whom I have learned so much about sermons. Patiently, he sat down with me every week to discuss the progress of my work. The same goes for Nikolas Jaspert, who hosted me twice at the University of Heidelberg, once for a semester in 2016, during the PhD, and again for my Postdoc project on Martin of León (2021â2023). Examining an Iberian crusade preacher, my host was the perfect fit for this project, and also very helpful in finalizing this book. Similarly, Jessalynn Bird has been such a diligent reader and supporter of my work, always encouraging me that my ideas about the sermons and their entanglement with crusading were on the right track. Last but not least, I am grateful to Christoph Maier for being a critical antipode to my work; the discussions with him have also been very helpful in establishing the final version of this study. Moreover, there are many colleagues to whom I am grateful for discussions and for commenting on my work, whether in oral or in written form, especially Wolf Zöller, Jonathan Phillips, Helen Birkett, Korbinian Grünwald, Alexander Pfeiffer, Patrick Marschner, and Gerd Micheluzzi. But there are many colleagues whom I must thank for valuable discussions and inspirations including (but not limited to) Matthew Phillips, Cecilia Gaposchkin, John Cotts, Simon John, Iris Shagrir, Sini Kangas, Georg Strack, Connor Wilson, Thomas William Smith, Suzanne Coley, Guy Lobrichon, Jay Rubenstein, James Henry Kane, Christoph Egger, Claudia Rapp, Christina Lutter, Walter Pohl, Lukas Husa, Nora Kuch, Kristina Hutter, Roman Kabelik, Reinhild Rössler, Valentin Portnykh, Pavel Soukup, and Jan OdstrÄilÃk. Moreover, I am grateful to the two Vienna Doctoral Academies (Medieval Academy and Theory and Methodology in the Humanities); these allowed me to get in contact with numerous other PhD students from several disciplines, and this forum was a very useful resource for developing my research. Finally, I am grateful to the ÃAW (Austrian Academy of Sciences), which funded me during my PhD via their DOC fellowship; and the same goes for the FWF (Austrian Science Fund), which funded my first Postdoc project via their Erwin Schrödinger fellowship. Without this generous funding, it would not have been possible to conduct this extensive research. Last but not least, I owe my thanks to Marcella Mulder, my responsible editor at Brill, the two anonymous reviewers, and the entire editorial board of Commentaria for supporting the publication of this book.