Cardiff Centre for the Crusades
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 Director of the Centre is Professor Peter Edbury.
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.
Members
Professor Edbury 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 (Cambridge, 1991); and, jointly with the late Professor J.G. Rowe of the University of Western Ontario, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East (Cambridge, 1988).
Dr 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 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: Oxford, 2000); The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1993), vol. 2 (1998), vol. 3 (2007); Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1997). He is currently Honorary Secretary of the Council for British Research in the Levant.
Other staff in the Cardiff School of History and Archaeology with interests which intersect with the history of Crusades include:
Professor Coss's 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.
Dr Aird has recently completed a biography of Robert Curthose, a leader of the First Crusade.
Research Projects
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 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.
Peter Edbury's new edition of the Livre des Assises by John of Ibelin (Brill) appeared in September 2003, and more recently has been investigating the manuscript tradition of the Old French William of Tyre; his current projects include a new edition of the legal treatise by Philip of Novara.
Helen Nicholson is preparing a complete edition of the Templar trial proceedings in the British Isles, 1308-1311. Denys Pringle is preparing the fourth volume in his project on the Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Acre and Tyre) and beginning a project on thirteenth-century pilgrims to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. In 2007 Helen Nicholson, with Jochen Burgtorf and Paul Crawford, organised a series of conference sessions in commemoration of the beginning of the trial of the Templars. They are now editing the papers presented at these sessions for publication.
Conferences and Workshops
The Military Orders: Politics and Power: The Cardiff Centre for the Crusades hosted the fifth international conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades in the Latin East on the Military Orders. It followed a similar pattern to the previous meetings held at St John's Gate (London), with three plenary sessions, and parallel sessions for communications. The conference was extremely successful. Almost 100 people attended: from Europe, North Africa, Canada and the USA. The proceedings of the conference will be edited by Professor Peter Edbury, assisted by an editorial committee. The costs of publication are assisted by a grant from the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust.