Here’s an item MacGregor uses to tell the extremely complicated story of the Crusades, which of course had good and bad in it, like everything. The received wisdom I got as a kid, from my “History for 16 Year-Olds” book, was that the Crusades were a) romanticized into this absurd fantasy about Arthurian chivalry and the brave knights of Christendom and b) a complete disaster for Europe and a blot on the checkered history of Christianity.
And yet, in reality, from the Crusades came productive opportunities for connection, as well, such as joint Christian-Moslem kingdoms along the eastern Mediterranean, which flourished for decades: trade, learning, love, good things as well as hypocrisy and lots of unnecessary smiting.
The item here is a glass cup belonging (or at least attributed) to a Polish queen from the 1200s, a saint who allegedly used this cup, or others like it, to transform water into wine. It’s one of those late medieval Catholic saints’ relics, like the toes and cowls and foreskins that were sold all along the route to the Crusades, like t-shirts with lame slogans in white-trash vacation towns, to gullible Christian believers. And yet, the funny thing about this beaker is, the Europeans didn’t have very good glass-producing facilities: this was made in Islamic Syria. You can tell from the decoration, done as a mold that was then pressed into the hot glass—it’s entirely Moslem in theme and character. Didn’t stop holy holy Hedwig from performing Christian miracles with the glass. Or is the trade, the connection between disparate groups, itself the real miracle?
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