I need some information on the Crusades

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havemercy

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I’m not sure if this is appropriate for the Apologetics forum, but its the busiest forum, so I’m assuming more people will see this if I post it here.

I need to write a four-page paper about religious conflict in the middle ages, and I’ve decided to go with the Crusades. I plan on concentrating on only a select few Crusades, though I’m not sure which ones I should go with (maybe you have some recommendation?). Obviously, I’ll recount the First Crusade, but where I should go from there is not obvious to me.

Most importantly, I’m looking for primary and secondary sources. Also, perhaps some commentary if it is not a narrow analysis of events leading up to each Crusade – in other words, commentary that is fair to the Church without necessarily being biased against fair criticism of her.

I hope that I’ve provided enough information so that you’re able to provide me with the help I’m looking for. Thank you so much!

Tony
 
My friend, you need to go to a good, old-fashioned library and start perhaps with a couple of encyclopedia articles and what you can find through the (nowadays online) “card” catalogue.
 
Be sure to include the one where the crusaders sacked Orthodox Constantinople instead of fighting the Moslems. Some historians credit that sack as contributing significantly to the eventual demise of the Eastern Empire.
 
Okay, thank you all.

I’m going to the library today to look through some books, and I’ve looked thruogh the articles on those websites. I’ve decided that I will cover the first few Crusades, and then briefly describe what happened in the others. I’m pretty sure that should suffice.

Do you think I should speak of the Children’s Crusade?
 
havemercy said:
Okay, thank you all.

Do you think I should speak of the Children’s Crusade?
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I am not going to suggest not to (because I don’t know the exact nature of your project), but in general I would not, and I will tell you why:

Let’s face it, the crusades in general are a strange episode (or series of episodes) in history. The Children’s Crusade is the bizarre amid the bizarre. Everything I have read about it makes my blood curdle with its strangeness, its improbability, its horror. It may be one of the ultimate examples of all time of truth being stranger than fiction. I would keep it a separate topic and devote myself to the crusades that at least pretended to be the effort of grown-up people to re-Christianze the Holy Land. And if I were writing, say, a term paper about the Crusades, I would say up front that I am doing exactly that.
 
Warren Carroll, Regine Pernoud and Hillaire Belloc’s books on the subject are excellent. I highly recommend them.
 
havemercy said:
I’m not sure if this is appropriate for the Apologetics forum, but its the busiest forum, so I’m assuming more people will see this if I post it here.

I need to write a four-page paper about religious conflict in the middle ages, and I’ve decided to go with the Crusades. I plan on concentrating on only a select few Crusades, though I’m not sure which ones I should go with (maybe you have some recommendation?). Obviously, I’ll recount the First Crusade, but where I should go from there is not obvious to me.

Most importantly, I’m looking for primary and secondary sources. Also, perhaps some commentary if it is not a narrow analysis of events leading up to each Crusade – in other words, commentary that is fair to the Church without necessarily being biased against fair criticism of her.

I hope that I’ve provided enough information so that you’re able to provide me with the help I’m looking for. Thank you so much!

Tony
Click to expand...
IMHO, the best history of the Crusades is the three volume set by Steven Runciman. It also has an extensive listing of both primary and secondary sources. A good library should be able to get a copy of the volume(s) you want if you cannot afford to buy.

Amazon has all three volumes, which allows some access to the contents list, index etc.

rossum
 
First, do a search on “Crusades” right here on the CA Forums. This has been discussed “to death” here on numerous threads. Lots of book lists and articles are posted with links / URL’s in a lot of cases.

Take a look at the events immediately prior to the Crusades.

Specifically, the Muslim “invasions” of the Holy Land, and up into what is now Turkey. And across Egypt and North Africa which were originally Christian. And up into Spain and France.

In AD711, the “Moors” crossed the Mediterranean into Spain at a place called Tarif. They basically conquered all of (or a good chunk of) Spain and moved up into France, where they were stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours (which used to be famous … taught to all the kids in school).

The Church in a defensive move set up two “sets” of Crusades… one into Spain and one into the Holy Land.

In those days, events “generally” moved slowly. No one could have envisioned that the crusades to the Holy Land would go on for 300 years. There were terrible miscarriages. Nevertheless, they did have the effect of causing the Muslims to look defensively for the first time and slowed their progress into Europe. You might also want to look at the Battle of Lepanto ( 1571 ) - which actually took place off the coast of Greece. And also the battle of Vienna in which the Polish Army defeated the Turks … 1683, I believe. and the data was on or about September 11th .

And who would have envisioned that the struggle in Spain would last for nearly 800 years!!! … AND it led directly to the Inquisition!!!

The Moors were not killed in Spain; they were merely ejected and went “back” to North Africa where they formed the basis for the Corsairs who attacked Mediterranean shipping for 300 years; they also attacked coastal towns in Spain and France and Italy and elsewhere to capture Christians to use as galley slaves and for sexual purposes. Read “Jefferson’s War” (the events around 1805 and the birth of the U.S. Marines … “the halls of Tripoli”). But the battles went on and on. The French, Italians and British finally ended the Corsair issue by colonizing North Africa. But that got reversed around 1960 and we are back to that again, but in a different form.

So, the historical, demographic, geopolitical and other aspects of the events preceeding the Crusades and ante-ceding the Crusades are really interesting.

On another thread, another poster stated that in their conquests, the Muslims killed 30 million Christians around that area.

This can be an extremely interesting issue to study.
 
I second the recommendation of Hilaire Belloc’s The Crusades. It only covers the first, but the first is enough to easily fill a 10 page paper. It’s not really a history book, and because it isn’t it’s able to give you a much better feel of the times and why things happened the way they did. It’s not a book a dry facts, it’s actually quite entertaining.

If you’re doing only a 4 page paper I would stick with just the first crusade. It’s enough to fill a 10 page paper easily. I can’t see how you’d be able to do anything but the most cursory glance at multiple crusades in 4 pages.
 
CAL did a show on the Crusades…its not coming up on the search calender so I will look manually. The one they had on the inquizition (also doesn’t come up on the search either…grrr) had some good info/resources so perhaps the Crusades show will too.
 
Hi,

I recently went to a talk on the crusades given by a member of Opus Dei. He’s got a PHD in history and I found that his talk was well balanced. You can find his talk here. It is called “The Truth about the crusades”. He also lists some secondary sources. I think it is about an hour long.

Hope this helps.
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