Constable, Giles, ‘The Historiography of the Crusades’, in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. by Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy P. Mottahedeh (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001), pp. 1–22.
Phillips, Jonathan, Defenders of the Holy Land: Relations between the Latin East and the West, 1119–1187 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
Throop, Susanna A., ‘Introduction: What Were the Crusades?’, in The Crusades: An Epitome (Leeds: Kismet Press, 2019).
*Warning:* This video contains some graphic and disturbing descriptions which may not be suitable for all viewers.
Primary Source Document
A translation of the remission letter granted to Antonie van Claerhout in 1455 can be found in Peter Arnade and Walter Prevenier, Honor, Vengeance, and Social Trouble. Pardon Letters in the Burgundian Low Countries, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2015, p. 116–18.
Discussion questions
1. Read a pardon letter or a petition for pardon. What do you notice about the rhetorical techniques and legal arguments used by the petitioner to support their demand for pardon?
2. How is violence described in pardon letters? What does that tell us about the medieval attitudes to violence?
3. Why could it be in the interest of a king or a prince to grant pardons? Does the late medieval use of pardoning threaten to deteriorate public order?
4. To what extent was royal pardon connected to the Christian notions of justice and mercy? Check the related vocabulary used in a pardon letter to elaborate on this question.
Online Resources
The Himanis Project website, transcribing and indexing some of the French Trésor des chartes that recorded remission letters.
The Calendars of the patent rolls preserved in the Public record office, available on the HathiTrust website, describe royal pardons granted by the English Crown.
