Crusade and Christendom


Book Description

Introduction: Crusade and Christendom, 1187-1291 -- The Pope, Crusades, and Communities, 1198-1213 -- Crusade and Council, 1213-1215 -- The Fifth Crusade, 1213-1221 -- The Emperor's Crusade, 1227-1229 -- The Baron's Crusade, 1234-1245 -- The Mongol Crusades, 1241-1262 -- The Saint's Crusades, 1248-1270 -- The Italian Crusades, 1241-1268 -- Living and Dying on Crusade -- The Road to Acre, 1265-1291.




A Most Holy War


Book Description

Historian Pegg has produced a swift-moving, gripping narrative of a horrific crusade, drawing in part on thousands of testimonies collected by inquisitors in the years 1235 to 1245. These accounts of ordinary men and women bring the story vividly to life.




The Crusades and the Expansion of Catholic Christendom, 1000-1714


Book Description

The Crusades and the Expansion of Catholic Christendom, 1000-1714 is a fascinating and accessible survey that places the medieval Crusades in their European context, and examines, for the first time, their impact on European expansion. Taking a unique approach that focuses on the motivation behind the Crusades, John France chronologically examines the whole crusading movement, from the development of a ‘crusading impulse’ in the eleventh century through to an examination of the relationship between the Crusades and the imperialist imperatives of the early modern period. France provides a detailed examination of the first Crusade, the expansion and climax of crusading during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the failure and fragmentation of such practices in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Concluding with an assessment of the influence of the Crusades across history, and replete with illustrations, maps, timelines, guides for further reading, and a detailed list of rulers across Europe and the Muslim world, this study provides students with an essential guide to a central aspect of medieval history.




Fighting for Christendom


Book Description

This insightful portrait of the Crusades illuminates both the rosy myths and the harsh realities of these epic adventures.







The Second Crusade


Book Description

The Second Crusade (1145-1149) was an extraordinarily bold attempt to overcome unbelievers on no less than three fronts. Crusader armies set out to defeat Muslims in the Holy Land and in Iberia as well as pagans in northeastern Europe. But, to the shock and dismay of a society raised on the triumphant legacy of the First Crusade, only in Iberia did they achieve any success. This book, the first in 140 years devoted to the Second Crusade, fills a major gap in our understanding of the Crusades and their importance in medieval European history. Historian Jonathan Phillips draws on the latest developments in Crusade studies to cast new light on the origins, planning, and execution of the Second Crusade, some of its more radical intentions, and its unprecedented ambition. With original insights into the legacy of the First Crusade and the roles of Pope Eugenius III and King Conrad III of Germany, Phillips offers the definitive work on this neglected Crusade that, despite its failed objectives, exerted a profound impact across Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.




The Crusades


Book Description

Illustrated with 160 photographs, paintings, artworks and maps, The Crusades is a fascinating and accessible history from the first ill-fated expedition to the Christian Reconquista of Spain in the 15th century.




A Brief History of the Crusades


Book Description

Why did the medieval Church bless William of Normandy's invasion of Christian England in 1066 and authorise cultural genocide in Provence? How could a Christian army sack Christian Constantinople in 1204? Why did thousands of ordinary men and women, led by knights and ladies, kings and queens, embark on campaigns of fanatical conquest in the world of Islam? The word 'Crusade' came later, but the concept of a 'war for the faith' is an ancient one. Geoffrey Hindley instructively unravels the story of the Christian military expeditions that have perturbed European history, troubled Christian consciences and embittered Muslim attitudes towards the West. He offers a lively record of the Crusades, from the Middle East to the pagan Baltic, and fascinating portraits of the major personalities, from Godfrey of Bouillon, the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, to Etienne, the visionary French peasant boy who inspired the tragic Children's Crusade. Addressing questions rarely considered, Hindley sheds new light on pressing issues surrounding religious division and shows how the Crusades have helped to shape the modern world and relations between Christian and Muslim countries to this day.




Crusading Peace


Book Description

Tomaz Mastnak's provocative analysis of the roots of peacemaking in the Western world elucidates struggles for peace that took place in the high and late Middle Ages. Mastnak traces the ways that eleventh-century peace movements, seeking to end violence among Christians, shaped not only power structures within Christendom but also the relationship of the Western Christian world to the world outside. The unification of Christian society under the banner of "holy peace" precipitated a fundamental division between the Christian and non-Christian worlds, and the postulated peace among Christians led to holy war against non-Christians.




Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe


Book Description

Throughout the Middle Ages and early modern Europe theological uniformity was synonymous with social cohesion in societies that regarded themselves as bound together at their most fundamental levels by a religion. To maintain a belief in opposition to the orthodoxy was to set oneself in opposition not merely to church and state but to a whole culture in all of its manifestations. From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, however, dissenting movements appeared with greater frequency, attracted more followers, acquired philosophical as well as theological dimensions, and occupied more and more the time and the minds of religious and civil authorities. In the perception of dissent and in the steps taken to deal with it lies the history of medieval heresy and the force it exerted on religious, social, and political communities long after the Middle Ages. In this volume, Edward Peters makes available the most compact and wide-ranging collection of source materials in translation on medieval orthodoxy and heterodoxy in social context.