ABSTRACT
The papacy, the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula figure prominently in the scholarly work of Sophia Menache. Following the Mamluk conquest of Acre in 1291, the Latin Christians, or Franks as they were called in the Levant, lost their last strongholds on the coasts of Palestine and Syria but were loath to accept this as irreversible. Plans for reconquering the Holy Land were proposed well into the fourteenth century. The broader question as to why the crusades could not be continued in the traditional way has been seen as a problem of communication, of being unable to convince people about the usefulness of crusading, and as a problem of modernisation, which implies that there was some momentum for giving up crusades. For some Templars and Hospitallers, the western Mediterranean may have suggested an alternative as was the Baltic for the Teutonic Order.
