Invisible Weapons - by M Cecilia Gaposchkin (Paperback)

About the Book

During the Fifth Crusade, Pope Honorius III likened liturgy to "invisible weapons." This book is about those invisible weapons; about the prayers and liturgical rituals that were part of the battle for the faith. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin tells the story of the greatest collective religious undertaking of the Middle...

Book Synopsis

Throughout the history of the Crusades, liturgical prayer, masses, and alms were all marshaled in the fight against Muslim armies. In Invisible Weapons, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin focuses on the ways in which Latin Christians communicated their ideas and aspirations for crusade to God through liturgy, how public worship was deployed, and how prayers and masses absorbed the ideals and priorities of crusading. Placing religious texts and practices within the larger narrative of crusading, Gaposchkin offers a new understanding of a crucial facet in the culture of holy war.

Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Review Quotes

Invisible Weapons is one of the most important books on the crusades to be published in recent decades. Like the very best scholarship in the field, it deepens our understanding of the crusades and the ideology that fuelled them, but situates the whole phenomenon within the wider cultural context of the medieval West, revealing ultimately how 'the liturgy imbibed the ideals of crusade such that crusade ideals and aspirations became part of Christian identity'

-- "Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies"

A model demonstration of how the liturgy promoted ecclesiastical goals, and how the technical, seemingly intractable, medieval liturgy can be made accessible to historians.... Comprehensive, convincing, and successful.

-- "H-France Review"

Gaposchkin delivers her argument not only with historical exactitude and ingenuity, but also with the care of a seasoned educator.... Gaposchkin's work stands at the top of crusade studies. Her work will strengthen the syllabi of seminars dedicated to liturgical history, especially of the medieval and crusading periods, and associated reading lists for doctoral students.

-- "Homiletic"

In this exceptionally learned, well-written, and important monograph, Gaposchkin makes a singular contribution to not one but two fields: liturgical studies and crusades history.... This is a monumental work deserving the attention of every medievalist.

-- "Church History"

The intricate web linking thought, expression, and action at the heart of this marvelous book [will surely make it] indispensable for anyone interested in the Crusades as a manifestation of medieval religious culture.

-- "American Historical Review"

This illuminating and detailed book reveals an aspect of crusading that is too easily forgotten--the practice of prayer and its dynamic relationship with the practice of arms--and urges us to remember that medieval Latin Christians were as serious about their faith as they were about their warfare.

-- "Reading Religion"

This is a hardworking and exciting piece of work... that makes an original and impressive contribution to scholarship on the crusades.

-- "The Medieval Review"

About the Author

M. Cecilia Gaposchkin is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Dartmouth College. She is the author of The Making of Saint Louis and the coeditor of The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres.