Fighting For The Cross Book Review
Crusading To The Holy Land – by Norman Housley
Fighting For The Cross is a fascinating and detailed exploration about the European Crusades to the Holy Land between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The author explores the full spectrum of the crusaders’ experiences, from recruitment through to the return home, whether triumphantly or after a failed trip.
Recruitment for the Crusades
Housley examines why men and women were inspired to take a trip to countries hundreds of miles away, based only on the preaching of people they had never met. He explores the issues of peer pressure, pressure from those higher on the social scale and also strong religious commitment.
Preaching tours were a particular feature of the Crusades, with powerful orators visiting dozens of towns and villages, recruiting crusaders as they went. Recruits were promised adventure, military glory and redemption of all their sins, all powerful reasons to join an expedition to the Holy Land.
Preparation for the Crusades
For most crusaders, leaving for the Holy Land mean more than just packing up a few belongings. Many people had family, lands and jobs to consider and needed to set their affairs in order because of the very real possibility they may not have returned from their trip.
The author looks at the various provisions put in place by both church and state to ensure that crusaders could have as easy a departure as possible. For example, many European countries allowed crusaders to write off or defer their debts, others allowed crusaders exemption from taxes and tolls.
The Experiences of Crusaders
The journey from Europe to the Holy Land could be both dangerous and frightening. Crusaders usually had to cross hostile territory and often literally fought their way to Jerusalem. The author examines primary sources which complain of the old and untrained hindering the process of ‘genuine’ crusaders who were on the trip to win back the Holy Land for Christendom.
Food was usually in short supply, belongings were stolen and arguments raged about transport, accommodation and even how battles should be conducted. Housley shows that human nature has changed little in hundreds of years.
Crusaders who returned to their homelands were not always treated with respect. Some returned to find their home and lands had been taken, others were shunned because they hadn’t completed their trip, or had failed to win a military campaign.
The author paints a vivid and realistic picture of what it was really like to be a crusader in medieval times.
Summary
Fighting For the Cross is a readable and engrossing study of the human face of the Crusades of the Middle Ages. One of the book’s strengths is its reader-friendly layout, with the text invitingly arranged with regular illustrations and sub-headings to break up the information.
The author draws on primary and secondary sources, which he cleverly builds into a clear and logical picture of the reality of crusading. The experience was more akin to going to war than undertaking a pilgrimage. He avoids being sentimental about the crusader’s experiences and makes clear the very real physical and mental dangers which crusaders faced.
Publication Details
Housley, Norman Fighting For The Cross: Crusading to the Holy Land [Yale University Press, 2008]
ISBN 9780300118889, 357 pages
Fighting For The Cross by Norman Housley
|
More in History
Latest Articles