Dr Thomas W. Smith FRHistS FRAS
Keeper of the Scholars and Head of Oxbridge, Rugby School
Dr Thomas W. Smith FRHistS FRAS
Keeper of the Scholars and Head of Oxbridge, Rugby School
I research, write, teach, and give talks about medieval history and the crusades. I gained my PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2013. I hold positions as Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway, Honorary Researcher at the University of Kent, and Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University.
My latest book is Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages (Boydell Press, 2024) – an exploration of the letters from the First Crusade, yielding evidence for a number of reinterpretations of the movement. Available to order at a 35% discount using the promotional flyer.
The letters stemming from the First Crusade are premier sources for understanding the launch, campaign, and aftermath of the expedition. Between 1095 and 1100, epistles sustained social relationships across the Mediterranean and within Europe, as a mixture of historical writing, literary invention, news, and theological interpretation. They served ecclesiastical administration, projected authority, and formed focal points for spiritual commemoration and para-liturgical campaigns.
This volume, grounded on extensive research into the original manuscripts, and presenting numerous new manuscript witnesses, argues that some of the letters are post hoc "inventions", composed by generations of scribe-readers who visited crusading sites from the twelfth century on, adding new layers of meaning in the form of interpolations and post-scripts. Drawing upon this new understanding, and blurring the distinction of epistolary "reality", it rewrites central aspects of the history of the First Crusade, considering the documents in a new way: as markers of enthusiasm and support for the crusade movement among monastic clergy, who copied and consumed them as a form of scribal crusading. Whether authentic letters or literary "confections", they functioned as communal sites for the celebration, commemoration and memorialisation of the expedition.
My first book, Curia and Crusade: Pope Honorius III and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1216–1227 (Brepols, 2017), was Highly Commended in the 2018 British Records Association Janette Harley Prize.
The pontificate of Honorius III (1216–27) ranks among the most important papal reigns of the thirteenth century: the pope organised two large-scale crusades to recover the Holy Land, the second of which recovered Jerusalem for the first since 1187; he presided over a ‘golden summer’ of papal-imperial relations with the medieval stupor mundi, Frederick II, emperor of the Romans and king of Sicily; he developed an original theological conception of his office; and he laid the foundations for a centralised papal financial machine. Yet, despite his significant impact on thirteenth-century Christendom, Honorius has often languished in the shadow of his famous predecessor, Innocent III – a balance that the present book redresses.
Grounded in extensive original research into the manuscripts of Honorius’s letter registers, this study develops a revisionist interpretation of how the curia marshalled the crusading movement to recover the Holy Land. Questioning the utility of the historiographical construct of ‘papal policy’, this book provides new insights into crusade diplomacy, papal theology, the roles of legates, and the effectiveness of crusade taxation. It also includes a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the papal chancery and its documents, which will be of particular use to students and those approaching the medieval papacy for the first time.
At present, in addition to working on a number of essays, I am completing a monograph on the Epistolary Culture of the First Crusade which is under contract with the Boydell Press for publication in the Crusading in Context series and, with Dr Susan Edgington, a new edition of the First Crusade chronicle traditionally attributed to "Bartolf of Nangis".
I was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2017 and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2021. I am also a member of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (SSCLE), the Haskins Society, and the Canterbury and York Society.
Since September 2019, I have taught History at Rugby School.
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