Just Finished Reading: The Crusades – A Very Short Introduction by Christopher Tyerman

Yes, yet another VSI book and the 2nd of 5 leant to me by my good friend CQ. Also yet again it’s an area that I know something about and have some interest in. Needless to say I know a lot more about them and my interest has increased also thanks to a very well written account of events spanning several hundred years of Medieval European ‘foreign policy’. As you probably already know the main focus of the Crusades was to restore the Holy Land to Christian dominion after its fall to the forces of Turkish and Arab origin. By and large these where spectacular and frankly embarrassing failures. Other crusades were focused inside Europe notably against the Cathars in France resulting in bloody massacres in the largely successful attempt to crush a dangerous heresy that could very well have overthrown the Catholic Church.

Of course this is all very interesting – if rather brutal and pointless seen from our 21^st Century perspective – but what I enjoyed most about this slim volume (and I intend following up in other works by this author) is the often complex and less than obvious motivations for Crusading. Seen at face value the Crusades were attempts by the Catholic Church to both expand and defend Christendom. This, the author contends, is all too simplistic and fails to address the underlying political and economic drivers as well as the human factors involved. At heart the Crusades were about power. The Catholic Church, under attack from home and abroad, needed to assert its authority in the strongest way possible – at sword point. The defenders of the faith who went out the fight and die under the cross aided the institutions of Christianity rather than the beliefs themselves. Scripture was twisted to give authority to the soldiers in the field to be soldiers for God and to kill in his name. Kings and Princes were seduced, bribed and all too often threatened to ensure their compliance in the wars for Holy Mother Church - largely to stamp the authority of Rome (and for a period Avignon) on the growing temporal powers. Only with the rise of the nation-state with national self interests and later with the Great Schism did this authority wane and the Crusades fade into memory. Nations were no longer so eager to expend blood and gold on projects not clearly in their own best interests.

The history of the Crusades is rife with propaganda and judgementalism. The author manages to cut to the heart of things seeing beyond and behind the simple Christian piety that seems, on first glance, to be responsible for such an outpouring of violence. Seen in the context of political and economic trends of the time the facts of the Crusades become much easier to understand. He covers a substantial period of European history with knowledge, authority and wit which made for a fascinating and entertaining read. I shall be looking out for other books by this author. Highly recommended even to those who might have little initial interest in this phenomenon.