A fascinating history of the growth in monastic and papal power that preceded the Crusades—excerpted from Diarmaid MacCulloch’s award-winning New York Times bestseller, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. A product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years stretches from the Greek Platonists and the origins of the Hebrew Bible to the present and encompasses the globe. In this excerpt, MacCulloch chronicles the rise of monasteries like the great Cluny Abbey, which formed orders that reached across secular kingdoms, enjoying exclusive papal privileges and encouraging their followers to make pilgrimages among towering cathedrals and far-flung shrines. Meanwhile, the introduction of the tithe, expanding control over marriage, and a new emphasis on Purgatory brought penitent parishioners even closer to the Church and dependent on ministry. By the time Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, the practice of indulgences had made possible his grant that all who died in a state of repentance and confession while fighting would gain immediate entry into heaven. Holy War spawned whole new orders, most famously the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, as soldiers from across Europe joined the campaigns of conquest toward Jerusalem. The many causes and consequences of these clashes between Christianity and Islam are captured here in illuminating detail with elegance and wit. Diarmaid MacCulloch’s latest book, Silence: A Christian History, is available from Viking.

Robert the Monk's chronicle of the First Crusade was one of the most popular such accounts in the Middle Ages. As such it gives an invaluable window onto contemporary perceptions of the crusade, as well as providing new and unique information - and all this in a racy style which on occasion would not disgrace a modern journalist. This is the first translation of the Latin text into English.

This is the first English translation of Robert the Monk's Historia Iherosolimitana, a Latin prose chronicle describing the First Crusade. In addition to providing new and unique information on the Crusade (Robert claims to have been an eyewitness of the Council of Clermont in 1095), its particular interest lies in the great popularity it enjoyed in the Middle Ages. The text has close links with the vernacular literary tradition and is written in a racy style which would not disgrace a modern tabloid journalist. Its reflection of contemporary legends and anecdotes gives us insights into perceptions of the Crusade at that time and opens up interesting perspectives onto the relationship of history and fiction in the twelfth century. The introduction discusses what we know about Robert, his importance as a historical source and his place in the literary tradition of the First Crusade.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Monasticism was the dominant form of religious life both in the medieval West and in the Byzantine world. Latin and Greek Monasticism in the Crusader States explores the parallel histories of monasticism in western and Byzantine traditions in the Near East in the period c.1050-1300. Bernard Hamilton and Andrew Jotischky follow the parallel histories of new Latin foundations alongside the survival and revival of Greek Orthodox monastic life under Crusader rule. Examining the involvement of monasteries in the newly founded Crusader States, the institutional organization of monasteries, the role of monastic life in shaping expressions of piety, and the literary and cultural products of monasteries, this meticulously researched survey will facilitate a new understanding of indigenous religious institutions and culture in the Crusader states.

"There are few historical figures in the Middle Ages that cast a larger shadow than Charlemagne. This volume brings together a collection of studies on the Charlemagne legend from a wide range of fields, not only adding to the growing corpus of work on this legendary figure, but opening new avenues of inquiry by bringing together innovative trends that cross disciplinary boundaries. This collection expands the geographical frontiers, and extends the chronological scope beyond the Middle Ages from the heart of Carolingian Europe to Spain, England, and Iceland. The Charlemagne found here is one both familiar and strange and one who is both celebrated and critiqued. Contributors are Jada Bailey, Cullen Chandler, Carla Del Zotto, William Diebold, Christopher Flynn, Ana Grinberg, Elizabeth Melick, Jace Stuckey, and Larissa Tracy"--

Sir Steven Runciman explores the First Crusade and the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the author of Powers and Thrones. For more than one thousand years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the larger story, charting a deeply human and avowedly pluralist path through the crusading era. Expanding the usual timeframe, Jones looks to the roots of Christian-Muslim relations in the eighth century and tracks the influence of crusading to present day. He widens the geographical focus to far-flung regions home to so-called enemies of the Church, including Spain, North Africa, southern France, and the Baltic states. By telling intimate stories of individual journeys, Jones illuminates these centuries of war not only from the perspective of popes and kings, but from Arab-Sicilian poets, Byzantine princesses, Sunni scholars, Shi'ite viziers, Mamluk slave soldiers, Mongol chieftains, and barefoot friars. Crusading remains a rallying call to this day, but its role in the popular imagination ignores the cooperation and complicated coexistence that were just as much a feature of the period as warfare. The age-old relationships between faith, conquest, wealth, power, and trade meant that crusading was not only about fighting for the glory of God, but also, among other earthly reasons, about gold. In this richly dramatic narrative that gives voice to sources usually pushed to the margins, Dan Jones has written an authoritative survey of the holy wars with global scope and human focus.

The essays in this book relate to two major aspects of the nature and effects of the reforms that radically changed the Western church during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The first is the emergence of the Crusades in so far as they developed under papal direction. Special attention is paid to the transformation in Western attitudes to warfare which occurred at this time. Secondly, the author discusses developments in the monastic order, looking in particular at Cluniac, Carthusian and Cistercian monasticism and the political, social and legal aspects of this process.

Spring, 1096. Europe's princes march their armies toward the Holy Land. They are accompanied by tens of thousands of pilgrims, led by a fiery preacher Peter the Hermit. Their destination is Jerusalem, the holiest of all Christian cities. Their goal is to conquer the Muslim occupation. History will call them the First Crusade. Among the pilgrims is Oderic of Rheims, a Benedictine monk from eastern France. He's devoted to the cause, but the Crusade will test every vow he swore to the Church. His poverty will be challenged by greed, his obedience tempted by blood lust. But it's his oath of chastity facing the greatest trial, in a deep, secret love for Rebecca, a Jewish woman Oderic rescues on the long road to Jerusalem. The four-year journey is filled with unimaginable hardships and dangers: terrifying Turkish armies, impregnable cities, a death march, starvation, excruciating thirst, desertions. Ninety percent of the Crusaders will never see Europe again. As Oderic evolves from priest to warrior to lover, he realizes he will not return to Europe the same man. If he returns at all.