Fighting for the Cross: Crusading to the Holy Land
By Norman Housley
Yale University Press, 2008
Dr. Housley’s attempt to capture
the spirit of what it was like to engage in crusading in the holy land during
the period of 1095-1291 from the preaching of Urban II and Clermont to the fall
of Acre, is fully realized in this fairly recent study. Though written as a text book, the prose is
easily read and informative, and is highly accessible to the wider public audience
without much background in medieval studies.
The approach of the work is
thematic in style, addressing largely the main issues such as the preaching of
the cross, public awareness of the symbiotic relationship of pilgrimage and
crusading, the expense and negative material gain, the opposition in the form
of Turks, Arabs, and Byzantines, and remembrance in written records. Housley strikes a balanced position when
addressing the main players of the drama, from lord to peasant, declining to
take an overtly moral stance that is so tempting for many historians. Instead the focus is on the over shadowing
impact of crusading, particularly the First Crusade, that affected the medieval
mind set towards many things, both spiritually as well as culturally. Of the more profound arguments, Housley
stresses the fact that though the written documents, principally clerical chronicles
demonstrating a demonization of the enemy, in fact many Europeans had a very
good idea about the actual culture and achievements of the Turks as well as the
Fatimid culture of Egypt. He approaches
this point by sifting through the hyperbole of the writers, looking closely at
what facts they use to color their accounts, and on occasion, the unexpected
admiration. As a side note, this fits
together very well with the actions of Emperor Alexius Comnenus I who is known
to have given the First Crusaders some advice about the enemy during their brief
stay on the outskirts of Constantinople.
It is particularly difficult to
find much wanting in Housley’s work.
Utilizing historical evidence from the First through the Seventh Crusade,
he sites many of the examples a student of the crusades is bound to expect,
while at the same time trying to pronounce a definitive stance towards nagging
topics such as the perceived personas of Saladin and Richard I, giving each his
due as a positive and negative personality, though perhaps a little more so in
the case of Richard. There is also the tendency
in the chapter Brave New World to introduce
teaser information on such subjects as Prester John and the Mongols, both
important and interesting topics that don’t get covered as fully as the reader
might like considering their importance in both their relevancy towards God’s
aid from foreign quarters and how this was rationalized by the medieval
west.
On the whole an excellent book that
I plan to utilize in my future teaching career, comprehensive and thought
provoking, I would even suggest it as the starting place for anyone embarking
on a study of the events and period of the crusades through the high middle
ages.
-John Lowe (J. Sharp)
