Jonathan Riley-Smith (1938–2016)

This is a well-written, short book that answers the question posed by its title. Its author obvioulsy possesses a wide and deep understanding of the Crusades, which can make for sentences packed with names and cities that are not exactly common knowledge. But that's OK: Riley-Smith lays out his answer in five clearly-marked and subdivided chapters; these concern just what consituted a Crusade and how they were justified, how the authority to launch them moved from the Pope to the local show more clergy, how indulgences work, and who took up the Cross (as crusading was called).

Riley-Smith also assumes that dismissing the Crusaders as looters afects our understanding of them. He states that the "moral repugnance" and "disapproval of what were considered to be typical manifestations of Catholic bigotry and zealotry" will not help anyone understand the Crusades:

"These attitudes," he states at the opening, "leading to images of crusades and crusaders which were caricatures, are still with us, deforming academic as well as popular history. I have always believed that objectivity and empathy demand that we abandon them, because otherwise we will never understand a movement which touched the lives of the ancestors of everyone of European descent."

This is as direct as he gets to a mission statement, but this atitude informs his overall portrayal of the Crusades. In his chapter "Who Were the Crusaders?" he argues that the simple motive of booty does not explain away the complexities of the times. "The last thing most sensible crusaders would have expected," he argues, "was material gain." show less

This is not a narrative history, but a collection of essays about aspects of the crusades.
In many stories, the reader only sees the top 10% of the iceberg. The other 90% remains beneath the surface. Similarly, many histories about the Crusades only present the popular narrative. These essays represent (a portion of) the other 90%.

For a person just beginning, this book is most likely not for you. Asbridge or Runciman would be better starting points. It would be like a Tolkien reader starting show more in the Appendices, the Unfinished Tales, and Histories of Middle Earth before actually reading the trilogy itself. As long as the prospective reader understands what this book is about, they will be happy with it.

Those doing in-depth studies about who participated, why, and how - the financing, the motivations, the social consequences on the families and local and regional economies (both on the home front and front lines), the impact on social classes, how they transformed Europe and the ME, the military orders - would do well to look here. There are discussions about how the crusades have been reflected over time by historians, literature, art, and architecture.

While each essay has a clearly distinct topic written by a distinct author, the essays are cohesive and show an awareness of each other, perhaps due to excellent editing by Riley-Smith. Some essays are more interesting than others, but I believe each is equally important to a more complete understanding of the Crusades.

The paper quality is good, the illustrations superb, and I found no typos or odd grammar throughout the text.

One thing I found particularly interesting was the illustration of Richard the Lionheart's effigy. Just as Yosemite gives set designers THE image of paradise and Sedona and Monument Valley are THE images of the Wild West, that effigy is THE stereotypical image of a vibrant medieval king from Errol Flynn movies to Shrek. show less

Exhaustive as it is exhausting. Short it may be but long on details. More of a reference book than a narrative, trying to read it straight through is confusing but never dull. Chapters are more like articles than chronologies.

Covers all crusades, not just the holy land crusades that most books focus on or readers think of as “The Crusades.” Ever heard of the crusade against the Wents? You understand what I mean then.

No footnotes and the unnecessary constant reference to “more on this show more below” loses a star combined. Otherwise, everything you need to know is concisely here.

“The aim of Christianity is not to fill the earth, but to fill heaven. Why should one worry if the number of Christians is lessened in the world by deaths endured for God? By this kind of death people make their way to heaven who perhaps would never reach it by another road.” - Humbert of Romans show less

My reaction to reading this book in 1991.

I was amazed at the amount of information in 171 pages, everything from Mamluk and Catholic Church organizational structure to detailed reconstructions of the Christian conquest of the Baltics and Spain. This book, amongst other things, puts to lie the notion of the Crusades I was taught in school: that they were motivated by economic conquests. Actually they were quite expensive undertakings despite some 1950s cynical historians’ pronouncements. show more (Although, the peception of the Knights Templar mooching off crusading zeal via their European land holdings and banking may have led to their downfall.)

I was led to a couple of thoughts reading the text and staring at the maps depicting decades. One, came while reading about the Holy Land between the First and Second Crusades -- that, staring at these century spanning maps, you had to realize a man could have been born and lived in the Crusader states all of a very long life. It’s sometimes hard to remember the humans behind the dates or that the Crusader states were home to many as well as destination. The others were the what-ifs of the Crusades; in particular, what would have happened if St. John of Capistrano and János Hunyadi had successfully defended Belgrade. It’s hard to remember the actions of individual crusaders may have had a real, if ultimately unknowable, impact on Western history.

The book also had a nice section on Crusading’s legacy today. I was interested to note the Knights Hospitaller still exist today. show less