Beth Spacey is a Lecturer in Medieval History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. Beth is a historian specialising in the religious cultures of Europe and the broader Mediterranean region. Her expertise lies in the history of the crusades and the Latin East, and she has broader research interests in medieval ideas about the supernatural, violence, gender, landscapes, and colonialism. She has published on the medieval Latin Christian historiography of the crusades, especially on ideas of the miraculous and masculinities, and is currently conducting research into attitudes towards nature and God's Creation in crusade texts. Her first book, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative, was published in March 2020 by Boydell and Brewer and was released in paperback in 2023.
Spacey, Beth C. (2024). Review of Making the East Latin: the Latin literature of the Levant in the era of the crusades, by Julian Yolles (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Humanities). Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2022, xii, 296 pp., ISBN 9780884024880 (hardback). Crusades, 22 (2), 290-291. doi: 10.1080/14765276.2023.2285152
Book Chapter: The natural and biblical landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry's Historia Orientalis
Spacey, Beth C. (2024). The natural and biblical landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry's Historia Orientalis. Crusade, settlement and historical writing in the Latin East and Latin West c.1100-c.1300. (pp. 242-258) edited by Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer. Woodbridge, United Kingdom: Boydell & Brewer. doi: 10.1515/9781805431510-018
Book Chapter: Guibert of Nogent, deeds of God through the Franks
Spacey, Beth (2023). Guibert of Nogent, deeds of God through the Franks. Christian-Muslim relations, primary sources, volume 1: 500-1500. (pp. 311-313) edited by David Thomas. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic.
Dancing with Demons: Emotions in the Origins of the Witches' Sabbath (1428-1442)
Doctor Philosophy
The Expression of Didactic Normativity in Tales of the Non-Mundane
Doctor Philosophy
The miraculous and the writing of crusade narrative
Spacey, Beth C. (2020). The miraculous and the writing of crusade narrative. Woodbridge, United Kingdom: Boydell & Brewer. doi: 10.2307/j.ctvrdf0w9
The natural and biblical landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry's Historia Orientalis
Spacey, Beth C. (2024). The natural and biblical landscapes of the Holy Land in Jacques de Vitry's Historia Orientalis. Crusade, settlement and historical writing in the Latin East and Latin West c.1100-c.1300. (pp. 242-258) edited by Andrew D. Buck, James H. Kane and Stephen J. Spencer. Woodbridge, United Kingdom: Boydell & Brewer. doi: 10.1515/9781805431510-018
Guibert of Nogent, deeds of God through the Franks
Spacey, Beth (2023). Guibert of Nogent, deeds of God through the Franks. Christian-Muslim relations, primary sources, volume 1: 500-1500. (pp. 311-313) edited by David Thomas. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic.
Guibert of Nogent, Deeds of God through the Franks
Spacey, Beth (2022). Guibert of Nogent, Deeds of God through the Franks. The Bloomsbury Reader in Christian-Muslim Relations, 600–1500. (pp. 248-250) edited by David Thomas. England, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic. doi: 10.5040/9781350214132.ch-60
Miracles and crusade narrative in the first Old French Crusade Cycle
Spacey, Beth C. (2022). Miracles and crusade narrative in the first Old French Crusade Cycle. Chronicle, crusade, and the Latin East: essays in honour of Susan B. Edgington. (pp. 149-164) edited by Andrew D. Buck and Thomas W. Smith. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. doi: 10.1484/m.outremer-eb.5.128886
Narrating ‘new wonders’: divine agency, crusade and Afonso I of Portugal's 1147 conquest of Santarém
Spacey, Beth C. (2022). Narrating ‘new wonders’: divine agency, crusade and Afonso I of Portugal's 1147 conquest of Santarém. Miracles, political authority and violence in medieval and early modern history. (pp. 78-91) edited by Matthew Rowley and Natasha Hodgson. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781003168294-4
Martyrdom as masculinity in the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi
Spacey, Beth C. (2019). Martyrdom as masculinity in the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi. Crusading and masculinities. (pp. 222-236) edited by Natasha R. Hodgson, Katherine J. Lewis and Matthew M. Mesley. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315166490-14
Spacey, Beth C. (2024). Review of Making the East Latin: the Latin literature of the Levant in the era of the crusades, by Julian Yolles (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Humanities). Washington, DC, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2022, xii, 296 pp., ISBN 9780884024880 (hardback). Crusades, 22 (2), 290-291. doi: 10.1080/14765276.2023.2285152
Spacey, Beth C. (2023). Review of: Helen J. Nicholson, Women and the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). vii, 287 pp., ISBN: 9780798806721; ebook ISBN: 9780191980701. Ceræ: an Australasian journal of medieval and early modern studies, 10, 189-193.
Spacey, Beth C. (2022). Katherine Allen Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century. (Crusading in Context.) Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2020. Pp. xi, 294. $99. ISBN: 978-1-7832-7523-6. Speculum, 97 (3), 893-895. doi: 10.1086/720578
Introduction: landscapes of conflict and encounter in the crusading world
Spacey, Beth C. and Cassidy-Welch, Megan (2021). Introduction: landscapes of conflict and encounter in the crusading world. Journal of Medieval History, 47 (3), 1-9. doi: 10.1080/03044181.2021.1928378
Spacey, Beth C. (2021). ‘A land of horror and vast wilderness’: landscapes of crusade and Jerusalem pilgrimage in Arnold of Lübeck's Chronica Slavorum. Journal of Medieval History, 47 (3), 1-16. doi: 10.1080/03044181.2021.1926667
Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000-c. 1500
Spacey, Beth C. (2021). Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000-c. 1500. Parergon, 38 (2), 262-263.
Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean
Spacey, Beth C. (2021). Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean. Parergon, 38 (2), 187-188.
The Conquest of the Holy Land by Salah al-Din: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Anonymous
Spacey, Beth C. (2021). The Conquest of the Holy Land by Salah al-Din: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Anonymous. Parergon, 38 (1), 194-196.
Spacey, Beth C. (2020). Visionary masculinities: emotion and the experience of the miraculous in latin narratives of the first crusade. Emotions: History, Culture, Society, 4 (2), 327-347. doi: 10.1163/2208522x-02010099
Spacey, Beth. C. (2019). Refocusing the First Crusade: authorial self-fashioning and the miraculous in William of Tyre’s Historia Ierosolymitana. The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture, 5 (2), 51-66. doi: 10.16922/jrhlc.5.2.5
Spacey, Beth C. (2015). The celestial knight: evoking the first crusade in Odo of Deuil’s De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem and in the anonymous Historia de Expeditione Friderici Imperatoris. Essays in Medieval Studies, 31 (1), 65-82. doi: 10.1353/ems.2015.0004
Spacey, Beth (2023, 02 16). Buildings tumbling, survivors living in tents: medieval descriptions of an 1114 CE earthquake in present-day Turkey and Syria feel eerily familiar The Conversation
Medieval Christians saw the lunar eclipse as a sign from God — but they also understood the science
Spacey, Beth (2021, 05 25). Medieval Christians saw the lunar eclipse as a sign from God — but they also understood the science The Conversation
Dancing with Demons: Emotions in the Origins of the Witches' Sabbath (1428-1442)
Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
The Expression of Didactic Normativity in Tales of the Non-Mundane
Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
Other advisors: