Depicting the Holy War

Depicting the Holy War examines the impact that crusades in the Middle East had on societies in western Europe through the analysis of a heretofore largely ignored type of source: mural paintings. In this book, Elizabeth Lapina analyzes five programs of mural paintings from the early twelfth to the late thirteenth century in what is today France and England¿in Hardham, Berz¿a-Ville, Ponc¿ur-le-Loir, Cressac, and Tour Ferrande. These images provide rare sources of information about attitudes toward crusades in locations that have produced next to no written evidence about the subject, such as rural parishes. Four of the murals are found in ecclesiastical structures, themselves sacred and made more so as the location of the celebration of mass. This sacralization of violence, Lapina argues, led to changing attitudes toward the enemy and depictions of battles as ¿holy wars¿ between the forces of good and evil. The mural paintings come from England, Normandy, Aquitaine, Provence, and Burgu