Jon Paul Heyne is an historian of late medieval history with a PhD from The Catholic University of America. His research centers on inter-faith encounters in the medieval Mediterranean, while his teaching encompasses a wider array of topics on ancient Greece and Rome, the history of Jerusalem, and the history of the Renaissance. He has received several academic honors, including the Andrew W. Mellon Rome Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship, and residential fellowships with the American Society of Overseas Research, the Albright Institute, and Notre Dame's Tantur Ecumenical Institute. In his co-edited volume, Mendicants and the Urban Mediterranean, c. 1200-1500, he and Austin Powell gathered essays from scholars around the world to provide a broad look at how mendicant men and women interacted with the various cities of the Mediterranean, from Venice and Jerusalem to Barcelona, Narbonne, Dubrovnik, and Tunis. He is currently completing a monograph on the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land titled Pawns Moving Kings: The Franciscans of the Holy Land and the Powers of the Medieval Mediterranean. The project examines the establishment of a few Franciscan friars and female tertiaries in Jerusalem c.1291-1517 and explores the ways in which this small and largely powerless Christian community living under Islamic rule reshaped the decisions of virtually every great power of the Mediterranean, much as a well-placed pawn influences the moves of even the mightiest pieces on a chessboard. He loves being in the classroom, interacting with students on the Mall, and getting coffee with colleagues at the CappBar.
EDUCATION
PhD Medieval History, Catholic University of America
M.A., Medieval & Byzantine Studies, Catholic University of America
B.A., History, University of Dallas
RECENT COURSES
HIS 2301 Western Civilization I
HIS 2302 Western Civilization II
HIS 3303 Ancient Greece
HIS 3304 Roman Republic
HIS 3305 Roman Empire
HIS 4357 History of Jerusalem
HIS 4357 Mediterranean World
HIS 4357 Medieval Spirituality
PUBLICATIONS
Mendicants and the Urban Mediterranean, c. 1200-1500, edited by Jon Paul Heyne and Austin Powell. Routledge, 2025.
“The Women who Bought Back the Holy Land: A Study of Latin Motives for Purchasing Property in Mamluk Jerusalem,” Journal of Medieval History 52, no. 1 (2026): 111-129.
“Building on the Foundation of the Fathers: The Patristic Age in Late Medieval Jerusalem,” Studia Patristica (forthcoming 2026).
“A Pilgrim’s Prioritization of Problems: The Importance of Doctrinal Divisions in the Placentini Itinerarium,” Church History and Religious Culture 106, no. 2 (2026), 129-47.
“In the Cities of the Sultans: Mendicants in Egypt c.1219-1517,” in Mendicants and the Urban Mediterranean edited by Jon Paul Heyne and Austin Powell. Routledge, 2025.
“Latin Lay Piety in an Islamic Context: The Development of the Third Order Community of St. Mary’s of Mt. Sion in Mamluk Jerusalem,” Franciscan Studies 81 (2023).
“Pilgrims, Custodians, and the Eastern Churches: Variable Christian Relations Surrounding the Fourteenth-Century Franciscan Foundation in the Holy Land” in A Contested Coexistence: Historical, Theological, and Linguistic Insights into Arabic Christianity, edited by Ryann Craig and Vasile-Octavian Mihoc. Harrassowitz, 2020.
“The Impact of Charlemagne on the Native Literary Tradition in the North” by Claudia Bornholdt and Jon Paul Heyne in Charlemagne in the Norse and Celtic Worlds, edited by Helen Fulton and Sif Rikhardsdottir. Boydell & Brewer, 2022.