fellows diverged so thoroughly from the conventional romance canon that they cannot fairly be classified as romances at all, as doing so would set them up to fall short of the genre's standards. For Childress, the difference between the romantic hero and the hero of “secular hagiography” lies both in the distinction between active deeds of prowess and passive Christian stoicism, as well as the level to which supernatural aid eclipsed human agency. Backlash Against the New Category Beginning in the 1980s, however, some Middle English scholars began to move away from treating Sir Isumbras as more hagiographic than romantic. For instance, Susan Crane disagrees with the separation of homiletic romance/secular hagiography from general romance, suggesting that tales such as Sir Isumbras challenge or subvert religious doctrine even as they engage with it. She claims that “these romances do accept and incorporate Christian impulses from hagiography, but they temper their acceptance with clearly defined resistance to those implications of religious teaching that are incompatible with pursuing earthly well-being.” Likewise, Andrea Hopkins has expressed reservations about treating Sir Isumbras purely as a romantic retelling of St. Eustace. While accepting the similarities between the stories, she emphasizes the importance of their differences in her 1990 book The Sinful Knights: A Study in Middle English Penitential Romance. For Hopkins, the central difference between Sir Isumbras and St. Eustace is that the former is performing penance for his sin of pride, while the latter is a true saint, suffering for the sake of the faith without prior wrongdoing. Rhiannon Purdie, while not denying the connection to St. Eustace, chooses to focus on the romantic influences upon the tale, particularly in the romance Guillaume d’Angleterre. Crusader Romance In recent years, a different type of classification has emerged for Sir Isumbras and similar romances, replacing the homiletic romance/secular hagiography debate. As scholarly opinion about the force and popularity of late medieval English crusading has changed from a story of decline to a story continued emphasis, some critics have attempted to place romances such as Sir Isumbras within the context of crusade literature. For instance, in his 2010 article “The Loss of the Holy Land and Sir Isumbras: Some Literary Contributions to Fourteenth-Century Crusade Discourse,” Lee Manion argues that the romance should be viewed in light of popular reactions to the loss of Acre in 1291. He states that Sir Isumbras “at the very least imagines, if