Miraculous rivers and monstrous cities: landscapes and gender performance in thirteenth-century crusading culture

The thirteenth-century crusade preacher and bishop of Acre, Jacques de Vitry, cast urban landscapes as a type of locus horribilis, marked by vice and violence, especially transgressions between men and women. In Jacques' depictions of environmental and human phenomena, the transgression of patriarchal social bonds signalled to audiences that the place was especially 'uncivilised'. For each place, Jacques detailed violence with increasing severity, adding urgency to the types of reforms he championed and confirming the right of ecclesiastical leadership to oversee such changes. Depictions of violence, therefore, helped to legitimise the violence it would take to bring about the dominance of Christendom. This article analyses Jacques de Vitry's representation of the urban landscapes of Paris, Liege, Acre and Damietta using the theoretical frame of social spatialisation. It shows how strategic application of spatial metaphors ascribed a particular moral identity to these urban places, and thereby prescribed audiences' responsibilities within them.