Sicily, Constantinople, and Jerusalem: A Geographical Pattern in Crusading Expectations along the Centuries

Abstract

Among the aims of Charles VIII’s Italian expedition, the reappropriation of the kingdoms of Naples and Jerusalem served as the main purpose for preparing the decisive crusade that would regain Jerusalem to Christianity. However, the connection established by several early modern sources between Charles VIII’s claims to the kingdom of Naples and the expedition to the Levant had already been expressed in previous centuries in very similar terms. Also, in the case of Charles I of Anjou in the thirteenth century, the acquisition of the kingdom of Sicily was perceived as a necessary precondition for setting military campaigns aiming at recovering Constantinople and Jerusalem. The same pattern appears also in Benzo of Alba’s Ad Heinricum imperatorem (eleventh century), where the pacification of Southern Italy is presented as the first step towards the reunification of the Constantinopolitan empire and the conquest of Jerusalem under the rule of Henry IV. The paper intends to shed light on a geographical pattern that periodically emerges in various iterations of crusading (and pre-crusading) propaganda (very often intertwined with prophetic expectations) which implied a tight interconnection between the recovery of the Holy Land and the unification of the orbis christianus under one universal ruler.