God's war
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Average rating3
15
Ratings1
Average rating3
The story of how a group of warriors, driven by faith, greed and wanderlust, carved out new Christian-ruled states in the Middle East is one of the most extraordinary of all epics. The crusaders' stunning initial success started a sequence of great Crusades, each with its own story, that fundamentally shaped the Christian and Muslim worlds for two centuries, until the last Crusader castles were finally expunged. The energy and commitment that sent army after army into the eastern Mediterranean also led to the invasion and conversion of Central and Baltic Europe, Spain, Portugal, the destruction of the Cathars in Provence and the settlement of America. Told with great verve and authority, God's War is the definitive account of a fascinating but also horrifying story.'We are still living with the images and legends of the crusades...Tyerman tells us how the Church set about preaching the crusades, exploiting the perennial pessimism and guilt of the European nobility of the Middle Ages. He shows how crusading ideology penetrated the religious sensibility of the period, as well as its secular fiction and poetry...Of all the modern histories of the crusades it is the shrewdest, the most reliable and the most complete.' – The Spectator
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This is an excellent overview of the entire crusading movement, and Tyreman has done a very good job with a very difficult task. Even at almost 1000 pages, he is barely scratching the surface of such a long and involved period of history. For those who want an introduction to the Crusades, this might be a little heavy-going, but for a deeper understanding or for working at an undergraduate level, God's War is a fantastic resource, if perhaps too long to prescribe as an undergraduate textbook.
For the major (numbered) crusades through to Louis IX's misadventures in Egypt, Tyreman takes a two-chapter approach, the first giving context, and the second examining the events and outcomes of the conflict. This ensures the reader is grounded in the wider events of the period - the Crusades did not happen in isolation, and events throughout Europe and, later, throughout Asia, combine to influence crusade momentums and outcomes. Smaller crusade movements get a more cursory treatment, I suspect due to length constraints than any comment on their importance within the wider movement; the insightful evaluation of motives and outcomes is no less for these ‘lesser' crusades.
Thoroughly researched and riddled with citations, with the delightful addition of academic snark, I highly recommend.
