Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- A note on names
- Map
- 1 Prologue to the study of Crusader castles
- 2 Fortification in the west and east before the First Crusade
- 3 Castles of the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem
- 4 Twelfth-century castles in the northern states (County of Tripoli, Principality of Antioch and County of Edessa)
- 5 Siege warfare in the Crusader lands
- 6 Nobles, Templars and Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century
- 7 The Hospitallers in Tripoli and Antioch
- 8 Muslim castles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
- 9 Postscript: Crusader castles and the west
- Appendix De constructione castri Saphet (translation)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix - De constructione castri Saphet (translation)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- A note on names
- Map
- 1 Prologue to the study of Crusader castles
- 2 Fortification in the west and east before the First Crusade
- 3 Castles of the twelfth-century Kingdom of Jerusalem
- 4 Twelfth-century castles in the northern states (County of Tripoli, Principality of Antioch and County of Edessa)
- 5 Siege warfare in the Crusader lands
- 6 Nobles, Templars and Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century
- 7 The Hospitallers in Tripoli and Antioch
- 8 Muslim castles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
- 9 Postscript: Crusader castles and the west
- Appendix De constructione castri Saphet (translation)
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
This short pamphlet records the reconstruction of the castle of Saphet by the Templars from 1240 onwards. The narrative centres on Benoît d'Alignan, Bishop of Marseilles from 1229 to 1267, who visited the Holy Land twice in 1239–40 and 1260–2. He seems to have been the inspiration for the rebuilding of the castle, as the pamphlet makes clear. The text exists in two copies, one in Paris of the fourteenth century and the other an undated Italian manuscript in Turin. Both are bound in with other Crusader texts including the Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry. The pamphlet must have been written between 1260 when Benoît visited Saphet for the second time and 1266 when the castle fell to the Muslims. Its anonymous author may have composed it simply to commemorate the bishop's work but it seems more likely that this is a fund-raising treatise, designed to be read or used as a basis for sermons and appeals. The emphasis on the cost of the castle, its continuous usefulness to the Christians and, in the final section, its role in protecting well-known Holy Places, suggest that this is a strong possibility. Whatever the motivation of the author, however, the treatise remains one of the fullest and most circumstantial accounts we have of the building of a medieval castle and provides a fascinating insight into what contemporaries thought on the subject.
de constructione castri saphet
Since it is our firm and steadfast intention to be always zealous in those things which are to the honour of God and to dwell continually and chiefly on those which we perceive to be for the exaltation of the Faith and the Church, the…
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- Crusader Castles , pp. 190 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
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