Richard Fletcher (1944–2005)
Educational Background
Having received his secondary education at Harrow School (1957–62), Fletcher was taught medieval history as an undergraduate at Worcester College, Oxford (1962–65), where his tutors included James Campbell. Fletcher went on to conduct doctoral research on the ecclesiastical history of medieval Iberia; a revised version of his DPhil thesis was published as a monograph in 1978.
Career Notes
Following his appointment to a lectureship in 1969, Fletcher spent his academic life at the University of York. He was appointed to a personal chair in 1998, but retired in 2001 to concentrate on researching and writing.
He continued to work on medieval Iberian history throughout his career, producing studies of the first archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Diego Gelmírez, in 1984, and, more famously, of the heroic figure of Spanish legend, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (better known as El Cid), in 1989. He received numerous plaudits for this latter work, including the Wolfson Literary Award for History.
Interests, Influences and Methodologies
It is unlikely that Fletcher would have regarded himself as an historian of the crusades per se; his work was always more focused on Christian-Muslim encounters in the western Mediterranean than in the Levant, and here he emphasised the fluid nature of contacts between ‘the cross and the crescent’ rather than stressing the primacy of ideologies of holy war.
Fletcher also researched extensively in other subject areas, including the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (work which remained unfinished at the time of his death), the Christianisation of Europe, and Anglo-Saxon England.
Contribution to Crusader Studies
Much of Fletcher’s work on medieval Iberia touched on the development of relationships between peninsular Christians and Muslims. His 1987 article, ‘Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, c 1050–1150’, challenged the often-held assumption that the frontier between the two religions was impermeable, and signposted important avenues for future research on the subject. It remains a seminal work for scholars of the Iberian crusades.
In 2000 Fletcher collaborated with Professor Simon Barton (University of Exeter) to produce English translations of four narrative sources pertaining to the history of eleventh- and twelfth-century León and Castile. The fourth of these narratives, The Chronicle of the Emperor Alfonso, includes material on the ‘crusading’ exploits of King Alfonso I of Aragón and King Alfonso VII of León-Castile, and a verse account of the latter’s conquest of Almería, which was one of the few achievements of the Second Crusade (1146–9).
Towards the end of his career Fletcher produced an important and concise study of the historical interactions between Christianity and Islam, which placed the crusades within a much broader historical context in which inter-faith co-operation was seen to be as significant as ideological conflict.
Fletcher’s contribution to medieval studies more generally will also be recognised in a forthcoming collection of essays, edited by Simon Barton and Peter Linehan, to be published in 2007 as Cross, Crescent and Conversion: Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher.
Select Publications
The Episcopate in the Kingdom of León in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1978).
Saint James’s Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford, 1984).
‘Reconquest and Crusade in Spain, c 1050–1150’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, 37 (1987), pp 31-47.
The Quest for El Cid (London, 1989).
Moorish Spain (London, 1992).
The Conversion of Europe: From Paganism to Christianity, 371–1386 AD (London, 1997).
The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest (Manchester, 2000) [with Simon Barton].
The Cross and the Crescent: Christianity and Islam from Muhammad to the Reformation (London, 2003).
Sources
Obituaries published in The Times (11 March 2005), The Guardian (18 March 2005), and The Daily Telegraph (26 March 2005).
Written by: Dr William Purkis