Lecture | Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History
Writing a bottom-up, practice-oriented and connected history of Christianities in the medieval Middle East (12th-17th centuries)
- Date
- Friday 13 February 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Research Seminars Medieval and Early Modern History academic year 2025 - 2026
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room (2.60)
Abstract
While each Church present in Jerusalem has been studied individually, no analysis of the interactions between the various Churches, nor with the sovereign powers, has yet been carried out. This shortcoming in an established field of research is partly due to the wide range of written languages involved, including Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ge’ez, Georgian, Greek, Latin, later Romance languages, Slavonic and Syriac. However, the academic compartmentalization of Eastern Christian and Islamic studies may be the main reason for this. Building on existing scholarship while being aware of its blind spots, benefitting from unprecedented access to the archives of Jerusalem’s Christian denominations, and using newer methods such as network analysis alongside tested and traditional skills such as codicology, the ERC project ChrIs-cross shall reconsider previous understandings of the legal, spatial, and existential trajectories of Middle Eastern Christianities over more than five centuries (1099 to ca. 1650), thus under seemingly alien rulers –Franks and then Muslims. This paper aims to present the methodological issues raised by these objectives, as illustrated by a few case studies focusing on the Ethiopian community in Jerusalem.
Research Seminars Medieval and Early Modern History
The seminars are informal and intended to foster discussion. There are drinks afterwards. Everyone is welcome to join.
If you would like to join a session, and/or receive invitations for the upcoming sessions, you can send an e-mail to: ngassistent@hum.leidenuniv.nl. Further information can be obtained from the organizers Shiru Lim, Judith Pollmann, Jeroen Duindam and Philippe Buc.