ECR Event

This is our first ECR event intending to give PhD and ECR scholars the opportunity to share developing research, and will consist of two papers. 

Pathways to Violence: The Influence of Social Memory and History at the Battle of the Springs of Cresson (1 May 1187)
Paper 1: On the 1st of May 1187, Gerard de Ridefort, accompanied by a mix of Templar and Hospitaller knights as well as a contingent of knights from the king's garrison at Nazareth, charged a detachment of Saladin's army, which numbered approximately 7000 men, as they were retiring back across the river Jordon. The battle that ensued was a massacre for the Christian forces which saw all but four knights killed. Gerard’s decision to charge was perplexing and it is therefore the aim of this paper to explore the role that social memory and history played in potentially influencing Gerard’s decision to charge.  

‘Other Emperors. The Title imperator in Hispanic and English Charters in the 11th and 12th Centuries: Survival and Disappearance’
Paper 2: During the 10th century, the title imperator appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Asturian-Leonese charters. In this period, in the two different contexts, the imperial title is used with different meanings and for different purposes. In the English case, although probably a chancery rhetorical device, the word imperator reflects the overlordship that the living king of Angelcynn boasted above the other peoples of the island. In Spain, on the contrary, the title is only used by others in reference to the deceased king whose authority cannot be described as an overlordship.

With the transition to the new millennium, we see a radical change. On the Iberian Peninsula, the title is finally used in first person by the living monarch and expresses his new position of peninsular superiority. Alphonse VI inserts it in his intitulationes and Alphonse VII has himself crowned emperor in 1137. On the other hand, imperator appears less and less in Æthelred’s documentation, and in Edward the Confessor’s it is completely replaced by basileus (which, according to this author, is not a simple Greek translation of imperator). It finally disappears in the Norman chancery. The aim of this paper is to analyse this disappearance in post-conquest England, in light of the Spanish case, where instead the imperial title is experiencing a period of revival. The title does not always coincide with the status. Behind an imperator there is not always an overlordship and it is precisely this title-status dynamic that reveals the reason for two such different endings.