Reframing Holy War and Sacrifice at the Close of the Middle Ages. Crusading Treatises in Comparison

The article tackles transformation in the idea of sacred war at the close of the Middle Ages, paying attention to the way crusading propaganda was reframed in the de recuperatione body of literature that flourished after the 1291 fall of Acre. A comparison of three crusading treatises compiled in the following decades — by Fidentius of Padua, Marino Sanudo, and an anonymous Dominican — shed light on the growing divide between the rhetoric of sacred war and its actual implementation. Despite the distance and divergence from the first crusades, the need to emphasise continuity with this tradition fostered new references to the military enterprises of the Old Testament, the image of Jerusalem, and the sacrifice of Christ and its penitential imitation by the miles Christi, thus reviving ideals of sacred war that were markedly out of line with proposed late-crusade enterprises