Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultu The Hell of Holy War: Reading Joinville's Crusade Memoir, (Hardcover)

<p><b><i>The Hell of Holy War </i></b><b>reads Jean de Joinville's famous account of King Louis IX and his Seventh Crusade as a powerful and unique representation of war, memory, and loss during the Middle Ages.</b> In 1248, Joinville, a French nobleman, set out for the Holy Land, having taken the Cross and vowed to follow King Louis IX--Saint Louis (d. 1270)--across the Mediterranean. It would be more than six years before he returned home, having survived devastating military defeat; capture, imprisonment, and ransom; disease and perilous sea voyages. Later, Joinville wrote a riveting, first-person account of the king he admired, the war he survived, and the people he encountered.</p><p>Usually read as a hagiography of Saint Louis and a founding myth of the French nation, Joinville's memoir, Irit Kleiman argues, is also a raw, even brutal, meditation on what it means to go to war, survive combat and illness, witness the deaths of almost all of one's companions, then return home again. In a series of capacious, lyrical, and historically grounded close readings, <i>The Hell of Holy War</i> reframes our understanding of Joinville's narrative as one that addresses the hubris of invasion, the friendship between men at arms, and the economic, ecological, and moral violence of war.</p>

• Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultu The Hell of Holy War: Reading Joinville's Crusade Memoir, (Hardcover)
• Author: Associate Professor of Romance Studies Irit Kleiman
• ISBN: 9781501789588
• Format: Hardcover
• Publication Date: 2026-10-15
• Page Count: 300