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'God's War' is a definitive history of the Crusades, drawing on all the most recent scholarship to give a vigorous, intelligent and absorbing account of one of the great movements of the Middle Ages.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

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

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Tyerman (medieval history, Univ. of Oxford; England and the Crusades and Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades) conveys in his title the importance that he places on the religious component of the Crusades. He traces the growth, in western Christendom, of the concept of holy war and how it emerged from earlier ideas of the just war. The Crusades can be seen, he points out, as a manifestation of papal power. The pope's ability to rally the military might of Christendom and to launch it in an attempt to regain the Holy Land highlighted the power that the western Church had over people's lives during the early Middle Ages. Challenging traditional conceptions of the Crusades, e.g., the failure to retain Jerusalem, Tyerman believes that it was the weakening of papal power and the rise of secular governments in Europe that finally doomed the crusading impulse. This is a marvelously conceived, written, and supported book, highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Robert J. Andrews, Duluth P.L., MN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

This is likely to replace Steven Runciman's 50-year-old History of the Crusades as the standard work. Tyerman (England and the Crusades), lecturer in medieval history at Oxford University, demolishes our simplistic misconceptions about that series of ferocious campaigns in the Middle East, Muslim Spain and the pagan Baltic between 1096 and 1500. Abjuring sentimentality and avoiding clich?s about a rapacious West and an innocent East, Tyerman focuses on the crusades' very human paradoxes: "the inspirational idealism; utopianism armed with myopia; the elaborate, sincere intolerance; the diversity and complexity of motive and performance." The reader marvels at the crusaders' inextinguishable devotion to Christ even while shuddering at their delight in massacring those who did not share that devotion. In the end, Tyerman says, what killed crusading was neither a lack of soldierly enthusiasm nor its failure to retain control of Jerusalem, but the loss of Church control over civil societies at home and secular authorities who felt that religion was not sufficient cause for war and that diplomacy was a more rational method of deciding international relations. God's War is that very rare thing: a readable and vivid history written with the support of a formidable scholarly background, and it deserves to reach a wide audience. 16 color illus. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Tyerman's recent studies of the Crusades have been well received, and this one will be too. This thick book compares favorably to Sir Steven Runciman's three-volume A History of the Crusades (1951-54), but where Runciman , writing a half century ago, saw the Crusades as Christianity's moral failure, Tyerman (Oxford Univ.) sees a violent era: neither Christians nor Moslems were peaceful, and both faced dangerous enemies. The arrival of the Turks upset the balance of power in the Middle East, just as papal claims for leadership upset the political balance in Europe. Together, they provided an occasion for a papal speech that caught the public imagination, starting a movement that no one had foreseen or could fully control. In addition to persuasive revisionist interpretations of individual crusades, Tyerman treats the broader scope of crusading, including Spain, the Balkans, and the Baltic. Most importantly for historians, the author sees nothing in the Crusades than can inform modern politics. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Suitable for upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. W. L. Urban Monmouth College (IL)