ABSTRACT
The written sources for the crusades usually show little interest in the religious art of the Holy Land. These texts suffer from an attitude that was widespread in contemporary monastic culture, which, while accepting the validity of these artistic images as a teaching tool, believed they might be a source of distraction. However, there are valuable exceptions that reveal much information about the iconographic programmes of the crusader churches – much of which has been lost – and that shed light on the peculiar contemporary artistic fruition in the Latin East. Pilgrims and crusaders lived their experience “ad Limina” as a total sensory immersion in the Holy Places, to the point of repeating mimetically the actions of the holy personages in their original contexts. Their hermeneutical skills were amplified compared with the normal faithful as they understood, for example, the very difficult doctrinal and political meanings of the mosaics of the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem or of the frescoes in the Cenacle on Mount Sion. Among others, the pilgrims John of Würzburg and Theodoric were excellent commentators who offered valuable insights on certain images that were the objects of veneration, and who dwelled with pleasure on the details of certain unusual iconographic paintings.
