Lisa Mahoney, DePaul University.
“Inventing the Latin Kingdom: Art and Architecture during the Crusades”
Sponsored by Archaeological Institute of America.

Abstract: The story of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem typically begins with the preaching of the crusades and the movement of large armies east. But there is another beginning to which we might also attend-that of establishing settlement and rule-and in so doing emphasize a different, less martial and less hostile, component of this kingdom. Indeed, it is this sense of beginning that most marks Frankish material culture, announcing as it does relationships to legendary regional figures, facilitating as it does new rituals, and relying as it does on novel artistic formulas. Together, such characteristics reveal the peculiar concerns of the Frankish population, which needed above all to unify members with diverse origins and root them to this place. Lisa Mahoney (DePaul University) will discuss works charged with this task, showing that even as kings were crowned and chronicles were written, it was material culture that played the most important role in the invention of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.