Session1123
TitleThe Baltic and Iberian Crusades: Visual Propaganda in the Borderlands
Date/TimeWednesday 6 July 2022: 11.15-12.45
 
OrganiserHarriet M. Sonne de Torrens, University of Toronto Mississauga Library / Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto
 
Moderator/ChairMiguel A. Torrens, Collection Development Department, University of Toronto Libraries
 
Paper 1123-a Crusader Art in the Baltic: Warrior Saints, Palmers, and Peregrinos in the Baltic Region on the Northern Baptismal Fonts
(Language: English)
Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens, University of Toronto Mississauga Library / Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto
Index Terms: Art History - General; Art History - Sculpture; Computing in Medieval Studies; Crusades
Paper 1123-b Visual Rhetoric in the Period of the Baltic Crusades
(Language: English)
Kersti Markus, School of Humanities, Tallinn University
Index Terms: Architecture - General; Art History - General; Crusades; Rhetoric
Paper 1123-c Crusading Ideology in the Border Churches of Iberia: Muslims as African Blacks in Spanish Romanesque
(Language: English)
Inés Monteira, Departamento de Historia del Arte, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid
Index Terms: Architecture - General; Art History - General; Crusades
 
AbstractThis session explores the visual evidence created to galvanise, persuade, and justify the holy wars undertaken in the borderlands of the Baltic and Iberian regions during the 12th and 13th centuries. In recent years, debates have focused on the historical sources pertaining to the crusades in these regions, with little deliberation on the visual testimony. The aim of this session is to open and extend the current discourse on what has traditionally constituted 'crusader art and architecture' in the geographic regions around the Mediterranean and include the borderlands. Participants will investigate how the crusader rhetoric and theology, the biblical two-sword concept (Luke 22:38) and the visual associations with the First Crusade were adopted, embraced, and reconfigured to visually promote the on-going conquests to Christianise the borderlands in the Baltic and Iberian regions.