countered and perhaps relegate the liberation (what, again?) of Jerusalem as such to the background. Those who returned from the Holy Land to Europe were the ones that brought the rich culture of the East into contact with the West. Those who came from Europe and remained in the Holy Land, however, retained a kind of blind loyalty to the authority of a medieval Europe that they imagined would remain constant. In this connection, Prawer refers to "the almost total absence of an intellectual elite in the kingdom" (532). As he puts it elsewhere,
The crusaders had an eye for the military valour and
often chivalry of the Moslems despite the recurrent
label of gens maudits. Yet not much else is noted, let
alone recommended. It was only when the kingdom was
nearing its end that an appreciation of Moslem religion,
mores and character came to the fore, but even then it
did not come from the crusader milieu proper, but from
European missionaries, who came for a closer look at
...