For the past two years the Museum of the Order of St John has collaborated with the University of Birmingham on the Bearers of the Cross: Material Religion in the Crusading World, 1095–c.1300 research project, thanks to generous funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

The project has been exploring the devotional worlds of medieval crusaders through a wide-ranging examination of texts, images and objects. Researchers have been studying the ritual practices crusaders observed, the religious artefacts they treasured, and the sacred spaces they shaped and were shaped by. Central to this work has been a fresh examination of the medieval collections of the Museum of the Order of St John.

Holy City, Holy War: Devotion to the Sacred in Crusader Jerusalem will present some of the highlights from the museum’s medieval and post-medieval collections and introduce some of the themes that have been at the heart of the project’s research.

To find out more about the project, the exhibition, and the museum’s medieval collections, please visit www.bearersofthecross.org.uk and follow @CrusaderMatter on Twitter.