This fascinating volume fuses investigation of medieval aristocracy, memory, the body, and crusading, among other areas of study, in the pursuit of a clearer and better picture not only of what made aristocrats participate in crusades and how they saw themselves in relation to crusading but also of the role that possession of the physical remains of dead ancestors played in aristocratic society. Jonathan Riley-Smith's ground-breaking study of the members of the First Crusade, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131, began a fruitful line of inquiry into the social world of crusade participants; Nicholas Paul's work here builds on and extends that inquiry and in the process illuminates the wider medieval world by drawing conclusions applicable beyond crusading.

There are many ways in which this book is valuable. It shows the intensity of social and familial ties in the past. It demonstrates that family ties were important in motivating crusade participation not just in France, but also in Austria, Spain, Flanders, Germany, and elsewhere. It underscores the fact that—all myths to the contrary—most crusaders did not undertake the crusade out of desire for wealth or other aggrandizement. Rather, they did so out of a complex of motivations that included penitence and both familial and class obligation. Crusading nobles were motivated to a high degree by a sense of the various responsibilities that attached to their privileged positions in society; this is a concept that sometimes sits uncomfortably in our egalitarian, post-Revolutionary minds, but it is nonetheless convincingly evident to a careful examiner.

In the opening chapters, Paul demonstrates that eleventh- and twelfth-century nobility were aware of the views expressed in contemporary monastic writing about the “responsibilities and obligations” of their class, and notes that although the written word was one way to convey these expectations, the arrangement (and visitation) of physical sites and monuments was another (17). He carries out an exploration of the written sources, and then spends some time, in chapter 4, examining the ways in which possession of the literal bodies of dead ancestors was important to aristocrats, and the ways in which that possession was employed. The fifth chapter examines the way the metaphor of the “closed gate” was employed in these aristocratic families’ self-understanding, and in their representation of themselves to the wider world, and Paul demonstrates the ways in which memories of a crusading past could be brought to bear (in these cases unsuccessfully) on a major figure in order to induce him to undertake a crusade (17).

The final portion of the book consists of case studies of Henry II Plantagenet and Alfonso II of Aragón. Paul examines their commitments—fulfilled and unfulfilled—to crusading and points out the ways in which landscape, monument, dynastic history, and choice of burial location were employed, manipulated, and adapted to, in each of their reigns. Paul is at his best here, when he is writing narrative he is engaging, colorful, and even moving. Earlier, briefer case studies, embedded in chapter 4, deal with the weight of loss borne by the women of killed or missing crusaders, taking St. Elizabeth of Hungary and the less-well-known Countess Ida of Louvain as examples. The anguish and distress of bereaved crusader wives comes across with great poignancy and power in these passages, and the real human beings who are the subjects of this study are allowed to assert themselves. One does wonders why Paul is quite so skeptical of some of the stories surrounding St. Elizabeth, as there seem no good reason to assume, as he does for example with the story of Elizabeth's shattered cry upon hearing the news of her husband's death, that these details should not be taken as “a faithful record of the actual events after the death of Ludwig” (168–169). An exclamation that all that was sweet in the world had terminated on the death of her husband seems not out of character for a bereaved young wife in love with that husband, in any age or at any level of society. And if the author—and the milieu in which the author wrote—valued veracity so lightly, then the entire enterprise of using these accounts to get at truth about the people in question is surely brought into doubt. But that is a mere quibble.

Whether intentionally or not, the book generally underscores the degree to which crusading entailed suffering, sacrifice, and loss, not only by the individuals undertaking armed pilgrimage but also by their families and kin. Death on crusade may have been (and was) viewed as martyrdom and instant entry into heaven, but it still constituted a challenging and rather unappealing path (137). Paul notes that noble family histories record “the profound difficulties and tragedies that crusading could cause” to those who participated, and points out that “the families … of many crusaders associated crusading with fear, loss, and, above all, uncertainty regarding the fate of the kin on crusade” (135). Loss of control of the bodies of aristocratic dead in particular troubled them deeply, and that loss was precisely what death on crusade, so far from home and family, threatened. Anxiety of this loss led, among other things, to the foundation of the military-religious Order of St. Thomas of Acre, which had as part of its mission the burial of dead pilgrims and crusaders (139). Paul also demonstrates that crusading was “deeply enmeshed in the very concept of nobility itself” (295), that “in certain circumstances crusading might even be seen as a hereditary obligation” (27), and that it was part of a story that was already old in 1095 (see, among other examples, 34).

Paul examines the way that Innocent III, with his legal, bureaucratic, rationalized approach, which was assisted by the rise of national monarchies, moved crusading away from its aristocratic roots towards a focus on royal leadership and patronage, and even more, making it the business of the church and thus of all of society. Human exemplars of the definition of nobility declined in importance as they were replaced by a more codified model of chivalric ideals, which were fostered in royal instead of aristocratic courts. Still, he shows that noble traditions, though somewhat altered in their expression, endured and gave the crusades what real force they still had in later years, as noble memories of their dynasties’ activities continued to contribute to crusading for centuries (292, 297–298).

With this volume, Nick Paul has made a valuable contribution to the entire field of medieval studies, touching as the book does on so many aspects of the period, and it is a desirable addition for both individual and university libraries.