Nicholas Lithgow Paul

My project is a comparative study of the dynastic commemorative traditions of the medieval nobility. My research collects, analyzes, and compares how medieval noble dynasties from across western Europe remembered events associated with the crusades. The sources analyzed are textual, artistic, and architectural, but consist primarily of the dynastic historical narratives that were composed over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, cycles of epitaphs, and programs of tomb architecture. The project explores the mechanisms through which families recalled and understood their ancestors, and how this process of remembrance may have shaped or been shaped by contemporary social, political, and cultural factors, such as the changing nature of noble identity in the face of rising royal authorities and institutions or the proliferation of vernacular literary forms.