Review of 'Constructing Kingship; The Capetian Monarchs of France and the Early Crusades'

Despite their presence in the popular imagination and their undoubted importance in the narrative of medieval history, the Crusades have for a long time sat apart from mainstream medieval historiography. Traditionally, the Crusades themselves are as peripheral in the minds of historians of Europe as they were geographically. As a result, they are either treated separately or consigned to a cursory mention when they take a major political figure out of the theatre of European politics. This detachment of the study of the Crusades from the rest of European history has happily been challenged in recent decades, and Constructing Kingship continues this trend.(1) James Naus attempts, in the latest entry in the ‘Manchester Medieval Studies’ series, to bring the Crusades home, so to speak, and to analyse their role in the development of the ideology of Capetian kingship in 12th-century France. The book’s timespan covers the period from the latter years of Philip I’s reign (1060–1108) to the end of that of his great-grandson, Philip II Augustus (1180–1223). In choosing this period, Naus deliberately avoids examining France’s most famous crusader king, Saint Louis IX, and focuses instead on the development of the ideology which created in Louis IX the impetus to devote so much of his life to the crusading ideal. The result is a bite-sized book (only 140 pages of text, including endnotes) which offers some fascinating suggestions about the projection of Capetian power in the 12th century, but ultimately leaves the reader frustrated by its brevity and unwillingness to fully explore many of the issues it raises.