France and the Holy Land
by Daniel H. Weiss and Lisa Mahoney

In the decades after the First Crusade, launched in 1095, French crusaders settled in the newly conquered territory of the Middle East, where they created a rich intellectual and cultural life comprising literature, architecture and the decorative arts. But these settlers did not merely transfer French artistic forms to the Levant; they also incorporated ideas and images from their Byzantine and Islamic neighbors.

In the new book France and the Holy Land, just published by the JHU Press, Daniel H. Weiss, the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School, and co-editor Lisa Mahoney, a graduate student in History of Art, have assembled a team of leading international scholars to shed light on the many aspects of this Frankish crusader culture. Although the crusaders were ultimately driven out of the Middle East, their stay produced a unique and fascinating intellectual and cultural flowering that was neither Western nor Middle Eastern but a distinctive melange that will now be better known and understood. (May, 400 pages, $44.95 hardcover)

GO TO MAY 24, 2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS.
GO TO THE GAZETTE FRONT PAGE.