Taking the eastern lintel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as its primary focus, the present study examines the way by which the image of the centaur functioned in a specific historical context – that of the Crusades – to help the Christians define the character of their enemy; and in so doing also define their own concepts of society and order. In addition, society in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was complex, presenting multilayered relations between the ruling Franks, the various indigenous Eastern Christian communities, and the Muslim population. Among the Latins themselves power structures were also multifaceted, balancing, to name just a few, between the King, the Patriarch, and the various Lords. As this paper would like to contend, the imagery of the eastern lintel was designed to manifest the different concerns of these groups and agents, enabling alternative readings by each of them according to their particular perspectives. - [Abstract]

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DOI: 10.3726/med.2019.01.07