ABSTRACT
In late 1291 the news slowly filtered to the West that Acre, the last and largest Christian stronghold, had been captured by the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt. The remainder of the Holy Land fell easily into Mamluk hands. The news of the loss of the Holy Land was met with consternation, if not horror. Western Europe’s crusading spirit, which had slumbered through most of the thirteenth century, now awakened to the stark realities of Europe’s precarious position. 1 Later developments throughout the century added to the widespread concern in the Christian West. 2 However, no recovery missions were immediately organized. Instead, the crusades in the fourteenth century were waged in literary works urging military unity, political alliances, and strategic religious conversions. The increased consciousness of the political and ideological necessity of the Crusades generated a bewildering assortment of carefully prepared cultural propaganda by numerous thinkers and pious travelers. Whereas political reality could not keep up with historical events, the rise of Crusade literature was a response to a desire to play out the crusading impulse in imaginative literature. 3
