HMML Summer Program 1998

Hill Monastic Manuscript Library-Summer Program 1998

Hill Monastic Manuscript Library

Summer Program, 1998

The Crusades and the Medieval Military Religious Orders

July 6-10

The Malta Study Center of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library is hosting a special summer program for research students interested in the Crusades. The program commemorates the 900th anniversary of the First Crusade, which led to the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. The program will consist of lectures and workshops that will examine the historical significance of this event and will emphasize the ways that careful examination of archival evidence can help historians to separate myth from reality.

The program is intended to encourage research into the Crusades and to allow participants to confront their own conceptions about the Crusades. The faculty includes several world-renowned experts in the field who will lead lectures and discussions about the important issues they confront in writing about the subject and about procedures for conducting research in scholarly archives. Special attention will be devoted to the resources of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library's Malta Study Center, which contains the complete Archives of the Knights of St. John of Malta, an important crusading order of knights founded in Jerusalem in the twelfth century. The Knights were active both in defending Christian sites in the Holy Land and in caring for sick and injured pilgrims. The Order moved first to Rhodes and then to Malta, which they ruled until 1798. They were considered Christendom's defenders against the Ottoman Turks; the Order of the Knights of Malta survives today and has its headquarters in Rome. The Malta Study Center of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library at St. John's University contains a unique collection of historical documents on microfilm, which provides rich materials for researchers to learn about the history of the Order itself and also of the Mediterranean world in which they lived.

The program will include two lectures that are free and open to the public:

"What were the Crusades?" Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Cambridge (England). (Wednesday, July 8th

at 8:00 p.m.; Saint John's University, Quad 264).

"The Development of Heavy Artillery and its Impact on Crusader Warfare." Paul E. Chevedden, Virginia Military Institute (Virginia). (Thursday, July

9th at 8:00 p.m.; Saint John's University, Quad 264).

Professor Riley-Smith is world-famous expert on the history of the Crusades and has published many scholarly and popular books on the subject. Professor Chevedden is a military historian with an expertise in pre-modern siege tactics who has recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for research on medieval artillery.

Members of the public interested in auditing one or more of the program sessions may contact the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library: (320) 363-3514.

More information about the program, its faculty, and the Malta Study Center at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library is also available through the Library.