Bringing the Holy Land Home: The Crusades, Chertsey Abbey, and the Reconstruction of a Medieval Masterpiece

What does this tell us about the Crusades?

Once this area, that was long controlled by Byzantine forces, went under Seljuk rule at the beginning of the Crusades it was open to Iranian and central Asian peoples who were primarily Muslim. Soon after these areas started to diversify, Byzantine pottery (and other artifacts they made) took on Islamic motifs, designs and ideals. The harpy was a common Islamic motif and now appears on this Byzantine bowl, which was most likely made in a workshop created under the Christian Byzantine Empire. This bowl is a reminder of the crusades extensive examples of cultural merging. The crusades acted as a facilitator for cultural merging in the eastern Mediterranean among Byzantine and Islamic cultures.
 
Not only did the crusades facilitate cultural merging within the eastern Mediterranean, but it also acted as the touchstone for eastern Mediterranean influence on Europe. The crusades were a time of extensive trade and travel which would influence the European world in terms of their art and design. In the 12th and 13th century, Italian mercantile cities, like Venice, began controlling a lot of Byzantine ceramic trade within the eastern Mediterranean. Byzantine potters were powerful in their position on the map between the Islamic and Christian worlds and helped influence European art and objects. Ceramics were easily traded items and their unique iconography would relate their position to the Holy Land and showcase the crusaders' travels there. Ceramics from the eastern Mediterranean would be valuable to a European crusader, acting as a reminder of their cross-cultural crusade.

 

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