Christianity and War in Medieval East Central Europe and Scandinavia

Radosław Kotecki (Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz) has published on religion and war, clerical warfare, and arms-bearing, especially in medieval Poland. Carsten Selch Jensen (University of Copenhagen) has published a number of works on the process of Christianization, warfare, and crusading, especially in the Baltic. Stephen Bennett (Queen Mary University of London) is a historian specializing in medieval warfare. He is currently working on a book covering participation in the Third Crusade.

Closing the gap between recent developments in Polish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Croatian, Slovakian, and Czech historiographies, the volume provides an important update to earlier conversations in English, French or German language scholarship. As a whole, the wider goal of the volume is to bring these regional histories into greater contact with other scholarly conversations about the intersection between Christianity and warfare; it achieves that goal.[...]Overall, this edited volume presents a good set of studies that help provide a good “update” for scholars that might be unable to read the locally-produced material on which the authors of the chapters draw. The editorial care to present as much good scholarship is evident: the authors are, for the most part, “known entities” among scholars of crusades and holy war.

• List of Abbreviations1.Christianity and War in Medieval East Central Europe and Scandinavia – An Introduction, Radosław Kotecki, Carsten Selch Jensen, and Stephen BennettPart I: The Church and War2.The Role of the Dalmatian Bishops and Archbishops in Warfare during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: A Case Study on the Archbishops of Split, Judit Gál3.Thirteenth-Century Hungarian Prelates at War, Gábor Barabás4.The Image of “Warrior-Bishops” in the Northern Tradition of the Crusades, Sini Kangas5.Memory of the “Warrior-Bishops” of Płock in the Writings of Jan Długosz, Jacek Maciejewski6.Preachers of War: Dominican Friars as Promoters of the Crusades in the Baltic Region in the Thirteenth Century, Johnny Grandjean Gøgsig Jakobsen7.Depictions of Violence in Late Romanesque Mural Paintings in Denmark, Martin Wangsgaard JürgensenPart II: Religion in War, and its Cultural Expressions8.Religious Rituals of War in Medieval Hungary under the Árpád Dynasty, Dušan Zupka9.Pious Rulers, Ducal Clerics, and Angels of Light: “Imperial Holy War” Imagery in Twelfth-Century Poland and Rus’, Radosław Kotecki10.Religion and War in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum: The Examples of Bishop Absalon and King Valdemar I, Carsten Selch Jensen11.Rhetoric of War: The Imagination of War in Medieval Written Sources (Central and Eastern Europe in the High Middle Ages), David Kalhous and Ludmila Luňáková12.Civil War as Holy War? Polyphonic Discourses of Warfare during the Internal Struggles in Norway in the Twelfth Century, Bjørn Bandlien13.Martyrdom on the Field of Battle in Livonia during Thirteenth-Century Holy Wars and Christianization: Popular Belief and the Image of a Catholic Frontier, Kristjan Kaljusaar14.Orthodox Responses to the Baltic Crusades, Anti SelartNotes on Editors and ContributorsSelected BibliographyIndex