Thomas F. Madden

Crusade activity and crusade piety played an important role in the evolving civic identity of medieval and early modern Venice. This project examines the methods by which Venetian leaders, artists, and intellectuals continually reinvented Venetian crusading identity in light of a rapidly changing world—one in which the enemy was as likely to be the Catholic Church as the Ottoman Turks. It not only illuminates for scholars the heretofore neglected role of crusading in Venetian history, but reveals more broadly the dramatically changing attitudes that medieval and early modern Europeans developed regarding holy war. These dynamics would continue to shape the troubled relationship between the Christian and Muslim worlds.