Writing Homework Help

Imagine that you have just discovered a new medieval text from the crusading era. In it, you’ve found previously unknown information that will change the way we understand the history of the First Crusade. Write a 3-5 page paper in which you describe the source, explain its significance, and discuss the effect it’s likely to have on crusade scholarship.

Some things to think about in writing your paper:

• What kind of text did you find? A chronicle? A letter? A legal document, such as a treaty? A work of literature?
• Who wrote it, and when? Your text can deal with any of the events leading up to or during the First Crusade, in Western Europe, Byzantium, or the Middle East.
• What language is it in: Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, or a vernacular language like French? Who was its intended audience?
• What can this text tell us about the First Crusade that no one knew before?
• How could this new knowledge affect historians’ perspectives on the First Crusade? In other words, explain what we knew before the text was discovered, and how this new text will change that knowledge. The impact doesn’t have to be radical—a new account of Urban’s speech at Clermont, for example, could be just as significant as a secret agreement between the Turks and Byzantines to sabotage the crusade.

The goal of this assignment is to think imaginatively about the historical record. New documents and new evidence frequently come to light in medieval history, forcing scholars to reassess established narratives. But those assessments still have to take into account all the other evidence that we have. Make sure you set your new document in the context of what we already know about its period. For example, if you’ve discovered a new version of the speech at Clermont, you should evaluate it in comparison with the versions we already have. Use primary and secondary sources that we’ve read in class to provide context for your discovery; you do not need to do outside research for this assignment.