The Cardiff Centre for the Crusades.

Director: Professor Peter Edbury

The Cardiff Centre for the Crusades was established in 2000 to encourage and develop Cardiff as a focus for research collaboration, conferences and publications in the field of crusading history.

The Centre’s interests embrace the history and ideology of the crusading movement, the history and archaeology of the lands conquered by the crusaders, the impact of the crusades on those lands and peoples against which expeditions were directed and from which expeditions were launched, and the history of the Military Orders. All theatres of crusading activity and any crusade from the end of the eleventh century onwards are included.

Click here for the programme for 2009-2010

Members of the Centre

Professor Peter Edbury (Professor: Medieval History) is a specialist on the history and institutions of the Latin East and Cyprus between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries and on Latin Syrian legal literature. Publications include: Kingdoms of the Crusaders: From Jerusalem to Cyprus (Ashgate, 1999); John of Ibelin and Kingdom of Jerusalem (Boydell, 1997); The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade (Scolar, 1996); The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374 (C.U.P., 1991); and, jointly with the late Professor J.G. Rowe of the University of Western Ontario, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (C.U.P., 1988).

Dr Helen Nicholson (Reader in Medieval History) is a historian of the Military Orders and the Crusades, and the depiction of the Military Orders in literary sources. Among her publications are The Knights Hospitaller (Boydell, 2001); The Knights Templar: a New History (Sutton, 2001); Love, War and the Grail: Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in medieval epic and romance, c.1150-1500 (Brill, 2000); and Chronicles of the Third Crusade (Ashgate, 1997). She is also the editor of The Military Orders: Welfare and Warfare (Ashgate, 1998); Palgrave Advances in the Crusades (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and co-editor with Jochen Burgtorf of International Mobility in the Military Orders (Twelfth to Thirteenth Centuries): Travelling on Christ's Business (University of Wales Press and University of Alabama Press, 2006).

Professor Denys Pringle (Professor in Archaeology) is the leading authority on the archaeology, architecture and topography of the Crusader States in the Levant. Among his numerous publications are Fortification and Settlement in Crusader Palestine (Ashgate, 2000); Belmont Castle: the Excavation of a Crusader Stronghold in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (with Richard Harper: O.U.P. 2000); The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus, 4 vols. (C.U.P., 1993-2009); Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (C.U.P., 1997).

Other staff in the Cardiff School of History and Archaeology with interests which intersect with the history of Crusades include Professor Peter Coss whose work on English knightly society includes precisely the sort of families whose members participated in crusades or in pilgrimages to the Holy Land or who joined the Military Orders, and Dr William Aird, currently at work on a biography of Robert Curthose, a leader of the First Crusade.

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Major Research Projects currently in hand by members of the Centre include the Ramla Urban project, directed by Denys Pringle and involving Peter Edbury and Andrew Petersen and scholars from the Universities of Glasgow, Oxford, St Andrews and Jerusalem, and the `Aqaba Castle project, directed by D. Pringle with the late Dr Johnny De Meulemeester of the University of Ghent and involving scholars from the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the Oriental Institute in Chicago. He is currently at work on project on thirteenth-century pilgrims to Jerusalem and the Holy Land

Peter Edbury's edition of the Livre des Assises by John of Ibelin (Brill) appeared in September 2003 and edition of the legal treatise by Philip of Novara is due at the end of 2009. He is now embarked on an AHRC-funded project to re-edit the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre. for further details see http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/hisar/newsandevents/history/edbury-ahrc-project.html

Helen Nicholson is preparing a complete edition of the Templar trial proceedings in the British Isles, 1308-1311: for further details, see http://www.cf.ac.uk/hisar/people/hn/trial.htm, and together with Jochen Burgtorf and Paul Crawford, is publishing a series of papers read in 2007 in commemoration of the beginning of the trial of the Templars.

Useful Link: The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East.

Please address enquiries to:
            Professor Peter Edbury
            Cardiff School of History and Archaeology
            Cardiff University
            CF10 3XU
            Wales
            UK
(E-mail: Edbury@cardiff.ac.uk)
Tel: +44 (0)29 2087 5651 or +44 (0)29 2087 4313
Fax: +44(0)29 2087 4929


Last updated September 2009


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