God's War : A New History of the Crusades

by Tyerman, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780674023871
• ISBN10: 0674023870
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

God's War offers a sweeping new vision of one of history's most astounding events: the Crusades. From 1096 to 1500, European Christians fought to recreate the Middle East, Muslim Spain, and the pagan Baltic in the image of their God. The Crusades are perhaps both the most familiar and most misunderstood phenomena of the medieval world, and here Christopher Tyerman seeks to recreate, from the ground up, the centuries of violence committed as an act of religious devotion. The result is a stunning reinterpretation of the Crusades, revealed as both bloody political acts and a manifestation of a growing Christian communal identity. Tyerman uncovers a system of belief bound by aggression, paranoia, and wishful thinking, and a culture founded on war as an expression of worship, social discipline, and Christian charity. This astonishing historical narrative is imbued with figures that have become legends--Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, Philip Augustus. But Tyerman also delves beyond these leaders to examine the thousands and thousands of Christian men--from Knights Templars to mercenaries to peasants--who, in the name of their Savior, abandoned their homes to conquer distant and alien lands, as well as the countless people who defended their soil and eventually turned these invaders back. With bold analysis, Tyerman explicates the contradictory mix of genuine piety, military ferocity, and plain greed that motivated generations of Crusaders. He also offers unique insight into the maturation of a militant Christianity that defined Europe's identity and that has forever influenced the cyclical antagonisms between the Christian and Muslim worlds. Drawing on all of the most recent scholarship, and told with great verve and authority, God's War is the definitive account of a fascinating and horrifying story that continues to haunt our contemporary world.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
List of Maps	x
Acknowledgements	xi
Preface	xiii
Introduction: Europe and the Mediterranean	1	(26)
The First Crusade
The Origins of Christian Holy War	27	(31)
The Summons to Jerusalem	58	(34)
The March to Constantinople	92	(32)
The Road to the Holy Sepulchre	124	(43)
Frankish Outremer
The Foundation of Christian Outremer	167	(18)
The Latin States	185	(27)
East is East and East is West: Outremer in the Twelfth Century	212	(31)
The Second Crusade
A New Path to Salvation? Western Christendom and Holy War 1100--1145	243	(25)
God's Bargain: Summoning the Second Crusade	268	(36)
`The Spirit of the Pilgrim God': Fighting the Second Crusade	304	(37)
The Third Crusade
`A Great Cause for Mourning': The Revival of Crusading and the Third Crusade	341	(34)
The Call of the Cross	375	(27)
To the Siege of Acre	402	(46)
The Palestine War 1191--2	448	(29)
The Fourth Crusade
`Ehud's Sharpened Sword'	477	(24)
The Fourth Crusade: Preparations	501	(23)
The Fourth Crusade: Diversion	524	(39)
The Expansion of Crusading
The Albigensian Crusades 1209--29	563	(43)
The Fifth Crusade 1213--21	606	(44)
Frontier Crusades 1: Conquest in Spain	650	(24)
Frontier Crusades 2: the Baltic and the North	674	(41)
The Defence of Outremer
Survival and Decline: the Frankish Holy Land in the Thirteenth Century	715	(21)
The Defence of the Holy Land 1221--44	736	(34)
Louis IX and the Fall of Mainland Outremer 1244--91	770	(55)
The Later Crusades
The Eastern Crusades in the Later Middle Ages	825	(50)
The Crusade and Christian Society in the Later Middle Ages	875	(42)
Conclusion	917	(6)
Notes	923	(63)
Select Further Reading	986	(5)
Select List of Rulers	991	(5)
Index	996