Book Description

This is the first translation of the Hystoria de via or ‘Monte Cassino Chronicle,’ one of the few surviving crusader sources from Southern Italy, where it was probably compiled (partly from known sources) between the 1130s and 1140s. The chronicle’s original sections offer new and fresh insight on the knowledge and reception of the First Crusade in Southern Italy, and the devotional and pilgrimage practices which surrounded it. The introduction contextualises the chronicle in the environment which produced it, discussing the historiographical tradition at Montecassino, the likely sources for the Hystoria, and its significance as an original source. The introduction also comments extensively on the theological framework of the Hystoria, which offers an intensely religious view of the crusade as pilgrimage, and insists particularly on the primacy of violence in its vision of Christian devotional practice, and the crusade as continuous movement through suffering for the pilgrims. The translation, which is both faithful to the text and highly readable, is accompanied by detailed references and a full commentary. The volume makes an important addition to the canon of crusader sources and provides a little-known example for specialists of the literature of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.