“zealous imitation”: the materiality of the crusader’s marked body

Abstract

Drawing on textual evidence from across the Latin West and ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, this paper explores the practice of crusader body-marking, whereby those who “took the cross” imposed cuts or brand-marks on themselves prior to their departure for the Holy Land. It is argued that these practices should be understood in part as an anxious response to the ephemeral nature of the crusader’s cloth cross, the defining material object associated with the crusades, which was traditionally sewn on to clothing as an indication of the bearer’s temporary commitment to imitate Christ through the medium of holy war. Further, by focusing in particular on the materiality of permanent body-marking practices, the paper argues that the experience of pain and suffering that was inevitably involved should be understood as an active expression of devotion towards Christ’s body, and thus situated within a broader context of medieval enthusiasm for Christo-mimetic mortification of the flesh.

Keywords:

• Crusades
• materiality
• body-marking
• branding
• scarification
• sign of the cross
• imitation of Christ
• mortification of the flesh

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was conducted as part of the AHRC Leadership Fellows project “Bearers of the Cross: Material Religion in the Crusading World, 1095–c.1300” (grant number AH/M010678/1). I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their generous support. My thanks also to those colleagues with whom I have discussed aspects of this paper and who made valuable suggestions for further reading, especially Marios Costambeys, Martin Heale, Mordechay Lewy, Miri Rubin, Robert Swanson, Rosie Weetch and Simon Yarrow.

Notes

1 This observation has often been interpreted as providing evidence for the production of medieval tattoos, possibly similar to those bodily souvenirs of the holy city that were sought after by later generations of Jerusalem pilgrims (Lewy 2014; Ousterhout 2015). It is by no means clear, however, that the practice Guibert was describing involved puncturing the skin with a needle and inserting pigment or ink into the resulting mark. Although Guibert referred to the crusaders’ skin as being “painted,” he compared the practice with the application of make-up, which suggests a temporary modification rather than a permanent one.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under grant AH/M010678/1.

Notes on contributors

William J. Purkis

William Purkis is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c.1095–c.1187 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008) and co-editor (with Matthew Gabriele) of The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2016). He has also published various journal articles and book chapters on aspects of the history of crusading, pilgrimage, and monasticism in the central Middle Ages. From 2015–2017 he was the Principal Investigator on the AHRC Leadership Fellows project “Bearers of the Cross: Material Religion in the Crusading World, 1095–c.1300” (http://www.bearersofthecross.org.uk), and in 2017 was the co-curator (with Abigail Cornick) of the Holy City, Holy War: Devotion to the Sacred in Crusader Jerusalem exhibition at the Museum of the Order of St. John, London. He is currently completing a book on the devotional ideas and practices of crusaders and other Latin Christians associated with the crusading movement, to be published by Yale University Press. [email protected]