Marino Sanudo Torsello, The Book of the Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross: Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis

This is the first English translation of the three historical and propaganda works of the Venetian Marino Sanudo Torsello. The Istoria and the Fragmentum together provide an invaluable source for the history of Latin Greece and the Latin Empire of Constantinople in the mid-13th century. They contain unique insights into the court and political ambitions of the Villehardouin Princes of Achaia, the Sanudi of Naxos and the last days and the flight of the Latin Emperor Baldwin II to Italy in 1261. Both works contain a wealth of anecdotal material on land and naval warfare that derives in part from Sanudo's travels in the eastern Mediterranean between 1312 and 1318 and his extended visits to his relatives, the Dukes of the Archipelago on Naxos in the late 1320s.Sanudo's major work the Secreta Fidelium Crucis was a piece of crusading propaganda following the fall of Acre in 1291, but includes much of historical relevance along with interesting observations on the early history of Jerusalem and the Crusader Kingdom.Sanudo advocated the conquest of Egypt as the means to regain Jerusalem for the Latins and worked through his points with considerable detail alongside references to thirteenth century Mediterranean history especially involving Louis IX of France and Charles of Anjou, king of Naples. Sanudo presented copies of this work to Pope John XXII in 1321 and to Charles IV of France in 1323.Book I deals with old Jerusalem with copious scriptural references, and especially with the economic blockade of Mamluk Egypt and its effects both locally and in terms of the Italian commercial republics. Book II is concerned with the organization of the military expedition to Egypt, with discussions of various routes, naval blockades and military conquest. Book III comments on the means of holding and governing the Holy Land, to avoid any repeat of the disaster of 1187.