Crusade
The
Crusades were a series of military campaigns—usually sanctioned by the
Papacy—that took place during the
11th through
13th centuries. Originally, they were
Roman Catholic Holy Wars to recapture
Jerusalem and the
Holy Land from the
Muslims, but some were directed against other targets, such as the
Albigensian Crusade against the
Cathars of southern France, the
Northern Crusades, and the
Fourth Crusade which conquered
Constantinople.
Beyond the medieval military events, the word "crusade" has evolved to have multiple meanings and connotations. For additional meanings see
usage of the term "crusade" below and/or the
dictionary definition.
The origins of the crusades lie in developments in
Western Europe earlier in the
Middle Ages, as well as the deteriorating situation of the
Byzantine Empire in the east. The breakdown of the
Carolingian Empire in the later 9th century, combined with the relative stabilisation of local European borders after the Christianisation of the
Vikings,
Slavs, and
Magyars, meant that there was an entire class of warriors who now had very little to do but fight amongst themselves and terrorise the peasant population. The Church tried to stem this violence with the
Peace and Truce of God movements, which was somewhat successful, but trained warriors always sought an outlet for their violence. One later outlet was the
Reconquista in
Spain and
Portugal, which at times occupied Iberian
knights and some
mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe in the fight against the Islamic
Moors.
In
1009 the
Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah had sacked the pilgrimage hospice in Jerusalem and destroyed the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was later rebuilt by the Byzantine emperor, but this event may have been remembered in Europe and may have helped spark the crusade. [
1] In
1063,
Pope Alexander II had given papal blessing to Iberian
Christians in their wars against the Muslims, granting both a papal standard (the
vexillum sancti Petri) and an
indulgence to those who were killed in battle. Pleas from the Byzantine Emperors, now threatened under by the
Seljuks, first in
1074 from Emperor
Michael VII to
Pope Gregory VII and in 1095 from Emperor
Alexius I Comnenus to
Pope Urban II, thus fell on ready ears.
The Crusades were in part an outlet for an intense religious piety which rose up in the late 11th century among the lay public. This was due in part to the
Investiture Controversy, which had started around
1075 and was still on-going during the First Crusade. Christendom had been greatly affected by the Investiture Controversy; as both sides tried to marshal public opinion in their favor, people became personally engaged in a dramatic religious controversy. The result was an awakening of intense Christian piety and public interest in religious affairs. This was further strengthened by religious propaganda, advocating
Just War in order to retake the Holy Land, which included
Jerusalem (where the death, resurrection and ascension into heaven of Jesus allegedly took place) and
Antioch (the first Christian city), from the Muslims. All of this eventually manifested in the overwhelming popular support for the First Crusade, and the religious vitality of the 12th century.
This background in the Christian West must be matched with that in the Muslim East. Muslim presence in the Holy Land goes back to the initial
Arab conquest of
Palestine in the
7th century. This did not interfere much with
pilgrimage to Christian holy sites or the security of monasteries and Christian communities in the Holy Land of Christendom, and western Europeans were not much concerned with the loss of far-away
Jerusalem when, in the ensuing decades and centuries, they were themselves faced with invasions by Muslims and other hostile non-Christians such as the Vikings and Magyars. However, the Muslim armies' successes were putting strong pressure on the
Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire.
A turning point in western attitudes towards the east came in the year
1009, when the
Fatimid caliph of
Cairo, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, had the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem destroyed. His successor permitted the
Byzantine Empire to rebuild it under stringent circumstances, and pilgrimage was again permitted, but many stories began to be circulated in the
West about the cruelty of Muslims toward Christian pilgrims; these stories then played an important role in the development of the crusades later in the century.
It is necessary to look for the origin of a crusading ideal in the struggle between Christians and Muslims in Spain and consider how the idea of a holy war emerged from this background. —
Norman F. CantorThe immediate cause of the First Crusade was Alexius I's appeal to
Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. In 1071, at the
Battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine Empire had been defeated, and this defeat led to the loss of all but the coastlands of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Although the
East-West Schism was brewing between the Catholic Western church and the Greek Orthodox Eastern church, Alexius I expected some help from a fellow Christian. However, the response was much larger, and less helpful, than Alexius I desired, as the Pope called for a large invasion force to not merely defend the Byzantine Empire but also retake Jerusalem.
When the First Crusade was preached in
1095, the Christian princes of northern Iberia had been fighting their way out of the mountains of
Galicia and
Asturias, the
Basque Country and
Navarre, with increasing success, for about a hundred years. The fall of
Moorish Toledo to the
Kingdom of León in
1085 was a major victory, but the turning points of the
Reconquista still lay in the future. The disunity of the Muslim emirs was an essential factor, and the Christians, whose wives remained safely behind, were hard to beat: they knew nothing except fighting, they had no gardens or libraries to defend, and they worked their way forward through alien territory populated by
infidels, where the Christian fighters felt they could afford to wreak havoc. All these factors were soon to be replayed in the fighting grounds of the East. Spanish historians have traditionally seen the
Reconquista as the molding force in the
Castilian character, with its sense that the highest good was to die fighting for the Christian cause of one's country.
While the
Reconquista was the most prominent example of Christian war against Muslim conquests, it is not the only such example. The
Norman adventurer
Robert Guiscard had conquered the "toe of Italy," Calabria, in
1057 and was holding what had traditionally been Byzantine territory against the Muslims of
Sicily. The maritime states of
Pisa,
Genoa and
Catalonia were all actively fighting Islamic strongholds in
Majorca and
Sardinia, freeing the coasts of Italy and Catalonia from Muslim raids. Much earlier, of course, the Christian homelands of
Syria,
Lebanon,
Palestine,
Egypt, and so on had been conquered by
Muslim armies. This long history of losing territories to a religious enemy, as well as a powerful pincer movement on all of Western Europe, created a powerful motive to respond to Byzantine emperor Alexius I's call for holy war to defend Christendom, and to recapture the lost lands, starting at the most important one of all, Jerusalem itself.
The papacy of
Pope Gregory VII had struggled with reservations about the doctrinal validity of a holy war and the shedding of blood for the Lord and had resolved the question in favour of justified violence. More importantly to the Pope, the Christians who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land were being persecuted. Actions against
Arians and other heretics offered historical precedents in a society where violence against unbelievers, and indeed against other Christians, was acceptable and common. Saint
Augustine of Hippo, Gregory's intellectual model, had justified the use of force in the service of Christ in
The City of God, and a Christian "
just war" might enhance the wider standing of an aggressively ambitious leader of Europe, as Gregory saw himself. The northerners would be cemented to Rome and their troublesome knights could see the only kind of action that suited them. Previous attempts by the church to stem such violence, such as the concept of the "Peace of God", were not as successful as hoped. To the south of Rome, Normans were showing how such energies might be unleashed against both Arabs (in Sicily) and Byzantines (on the mainland). A Latin hegemony in the Levant would provide leverage in resolving the Papacy's claims of supremacy over the
Patriarch of Constantinople, which had resulted in the Great Schism of 1054, a rift that might yet be resolved through the force of Frankish arms.
In the Byzantine homelands the Eastern Emperor's weakness was revealed by the disastrous defeat at the
Battle of Manzikert in
1071, which reduced the Empire's Asian territory to a region in western Anatolia and around Constantinople. A sure sign of Byzantine desperation was the appeal of Alexius I Comnenus to his enemy the Pope for aid. But Gregory was occupied with the
Investiture Controversy and could not call on the German emperor and the crusade never took shape.
For Gregory's more moderate successor Pope Urban II, a crusade would serve to reunite Christendom, bolster the Papacy, and perhaps bring the East under his control. The disaffected Germans and the Normans were not to be counted on, but the heart and backbone of a crusade could be found in Urban's own homeland among the northern French.
On a popular level, the first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious fury that was expressed in the massacres of Jews that accompanied the movement of mobs through Europe, as well as the violent treatment of "schismatic" Orthodox Christians of the east. The violence against the Orthodox Christians culminated in the sack of Constantinople in
1204, in which most of the Crusading armies took part.
The 13th century crusades never expressed such a popular fever, and after Acre fell for the last time in
1291, and after the extermination of the Occitan
Cathars in the
Albigensian Crusade, the crusading ideal became devalued by Papal justifications of political and territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe.
The last crusading order of knights to hold territory were the
Knights Hospitaller. After the final fall of Acre they took control of the island of
Rhodes, and in the sixteenth century were driven to
Malta. These last crusaders were finally unseated by
Napoleon in
1798.
A traditional numbering scheme for the crusades gives us nine during the 11th to 13th centuries, as well as other smaller crusades that are mostly contemporaneous and unnumbered. There were frequent "minor" crusades throughout this period, not only in
Palestine but also in the Iberian Peninsula and central Europe, against not only Muslims, but also Christian heretics and personal enemies of the Papacy or other powerful monarchs. Such "crusades" continued into the
16th century, until the
Renaissance and
Reformation when the political and religious climate of Europe was significantly different than that of the Middle Ages. The following is a listing of the "major" crusades.
First Crusade
Full article: First CrusadeAfter Byzantine emperor
Alexius I called for help with defending his empire against the
Seljuk Turks, in 1095 at the
Council of Clermont Pope Urban II called upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks, a war which would count as full penance. Crusader armies managed to defeat two substantial Turkish forces at
Dorylaeum and at
Antioch, finally marching to Jerusalem with only a fraction of their original forces. In
1099, they
took Jerusalem by assault and massacred the population. As a result of the First Crusade, several small
Crusader states were created, notably the
Kingdom of Jerusalem. Following this crusade there was a second, unsuccessful wave of crusaders, the
Crusade of 1101.
Second Crusade
Full article: Second CrusadeAfter a period of relative peace, in which Christians and Muslims co-existed in the
Holy Land,
Bernard of Clairvaux preached a new crusade when the town of
Edessa was conquered by the Turks. French and German armies under
Louis VII of France and
Conrad III of Germany, marched to Asia Minor in
1147, but failed to accomplish any major successes, and indeed endangered the survival of the Crusader states with a foolish attack on
Damascus. By
1149, both leaders had returned to their countries without any result.
Third Crusade
Full article: Third CrusadeIn
1187,
Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, recaptured
Jerusalem.
Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade, which was led by several of Europe's most important leaders:
Philip II of France,
Richard I of England and
Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick drowned in
Cilicia in
1190, leaving an unstable alliance between the English and the French. Philip left in
1191 after the Crusaders had recaptured Acre from the Muslims. The Crusader army headed down the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. They defeated the Muslims near Arsuf and were in sight of Jerusalem. However, the inability of the Crusaders to thrive in the locale due to inadequate food and water resulted in an empty victory. Richard left the following year after establishing a truce with Saladin. On Richard's way home, his ship was wrecked and he ended up in Austria. In Austria his enemy Duke Leopold captured him, delivered him to Frederick's son
Henry VI and Richard was held for, literally, a king's ransom. By
1197, Henry felt himself ready for a Crusade, but he died in the same year of malaria.
Fourth Crusade
Full article: Fourth CrusadeJerusalem having fallen back into Muslim hands a decade earlier, the Fourth Crusade was initiated in
1202 by
Pope Innocent III, with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt. The
Venetians, under
Doge Enrico Dandolo, gained control of this crusade and diverted it to, first to the Christian city of Zara, then to
Constantinople where they attempted to place a Byzantine exile on the throne. After a series of misunderstandings and outbreaks of violence, the city was sacked in
1204.
Albigensian Crusade
Full article: Albigensian CrusadeThe
Albigensian Crusade was launched in
1209 to eliminate the
heretical Cathars of southern
France. It was a decades-long struggle that had as much to do with the concerns of northern France to extend its control southwards as it did with heresy. In the end, both the Cathars and the independence of southern France were exterminated.
Children's Crusade
Full article: Children's CrusadeThe Children's Crusade is a possibly fictitious or misinterpreted crusade of
1212. The story is that an outburst of the old popular enthusiasm led a gathering of children in France and Germany, which
Pope Innocent III interpreted as a reproof from heaven to their unworthy elders. None of the children actually reached the Holy Land; they were all sold as slaves, settled along the route to
Jerusalem, or died of hunger during the journey.
Fifth Crusade
Full article: Fifth CrusadeBy processions, prayers, and preaching, the Church attempted to set another crusade on foot, and the
Fourth Council of the Lateran (
1215) formulated a plan for the recovery of the Holy Land. A crusading force from
Hungary,
Austria, and
Bavaria achieved a remarkable feat in the capture of
Damietta in
Egypt in
1219, but under the urgent insistence of the
papal legate, Pelagius, they proceeded to a foolhardy attack on
Cairo, and an
inundation of the
Nile compelled them to choose between surrender and destruction.
Sixth Crusade
Full article: Sixth CrusadeIn
1228,
Emperor Frederick II set sail from
Brindisi for Syria, though laden with the papal
excommunication. Through diplomacy he achieved unexpected success,
Jerusalem,
Nazareth, and
Bethlehem being delivered to the Crusaders for a period of ten years. This was the first major crusade not initiated by the Papacy, a trend that was to continue for the rest of the century.
Seventh Crusade
Full article: Seventh CrusadeThe papal interests represented by the
Templars brought on a conflict with
Egypt in
1243, and in the following year a
Khwarezmian force summoned by the latter stormed Jerusalem. Although this provoked no widespread outrage in Europe as the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 had done,
Louis IX of France organized a crusade against
Egypt from
1248 to
1254, leaving from the newly constructed port of
Aigues-Mortes in southern France. It was a failure and Louis spent much of the crusade living at the court of the Crusader kingdom in Acre. In the midst of this crusade was the first
Shepherds' Crusade in 1251.
Eighth Crusade
Full article: Eighth CrusadeThe eighth Crusade was organized by
Louis IX in
1270, again sailing from
Aigues-Mortes, initially to come to the aid of the remnants of the Crusader states in
Syria. However, the crusade was diverted to
Tunis, where Louis spent only two months before dying. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted as the Seventh, if the Fifth and Sixth Crusades are counted as a single crusade. The Ninth Crusade is sometimes also counted as part of the Eighth.
Ninth Crusade
Full article: Ninth CrusadeThe future
Edward I of England undertook another expedition in
1271, after having accompanied Louis on the Eighth Crusade. He accomplished very little in Syria and retired the following year after a truce. With the fall of
Antioch (
1268),
Tripoli (
1289), and
Acre (
1291) the last traces of the Christian rule in
Syria disappeared.
Crusades in Baltic and Central Europe
Full article: Northern CrusadesThe Crusades in the
Baltic Sea area and in
Central Europe were efforts by (mostly German) Christians to subjugate and convert the peoples of these areas to Christianity. These Crusades ranged from the
12th century, contemporaneous with the Second Crusade, to the
16th century.
Between 1232 and 1234, there was a crusade against the
Stedingers. This crusade was special, because the Stedingers were no heathens or heretics, but fellow Roman Catholics. They were free
Frisian farmers who resented attempts of the count of
Oldenburg and the archbishop
Bremen-Hamburg to make an end to their freedoms. The archbishop excommunicated them and the pope declared a crusade in 1232. The Stedingers were defeated in 1234.
The Crusades had profound and lasting historical impacts.
Europe
The Crusades had an enormous influence on the European
Middle Ages. At times much of the continent was united under a powerful
Papacy, but by the 14th century the old concept of
Christendom was fragmented, and the development of centralized bureaucracies (the foundation of the modern
nation-state) was well on its way in
France,
England,
Burgundy,
Portugal,
Castile, and
Aragon partly because of the dominance of the church at the beginning of the crusading era. Although
Europe had been exposed to
Islamic culture for centuries through contacts in
Iberian Peninsula and
Sicily, much
Islamic thought, such as science, medicine, and architecture, was transferred to the west during the crusades. The military experiences of the crusades also had their effects in Europe; for example, European
castles became massive stone structures, as they were in the east, rather than smaller wooden buildings as they had typically been in the past. The need to raise, transport and supply large armies led to a flourishing of trade throughout Europe. Roads largely unused since the days of
Rome saw significant increases in traffic as local merchants began to expand their horizons. This was not only because the Crusades
prepared Europe for travel, but rather that many
wanted to travel after being reacquainted with the products of the Middle East. This also aided in the beginning of the
Renaissance in Italy, as various Italian
city-states from the very beginning had important and profitable trading colonies in the crusader states, both in the
Holy Land and later in captured
Byzantine territory. Despite the ultimate defeat in the Middle East, the Crusaders regained the Iberian Peninsula permanently and slowed down the military expansion of Islam.
Islamic world
The crusades had profound but localized effects upon the Islamic world, where the equivalents of "Franks" and "Crusaders" remained expressions of disdain. Muslims traditionally celebrate
Saladin, the
Kurdish warrior, as a hero against the Crusaders. In the 21st century, some in the Arab world, such as the
Arab independence movement and
Pan-Islamism movement, continue to call Western involvement in the Middle East a "crusade." The Crusades were regarded by the Islamic world as cruel and savage onslaughts by European Christians.
Jewish community
 |
1250 French Bible illustration depicts Jews (identifiable by Judenhut) being massacred by Crusaders |
The Crusaders' atrocities against
Jews in the German and Hungarian towns, later also in those of France and England, and in the massacres of non-combatants in Palestine and Syria have become a significant part of the
history of anti-Semitism, although no Crusade was ever declared against Jews. These attacks left behind for centuries strong feelings of ill will on both sides. The social position of the Jews in western Europe was distinctly worsened, and legal restrictions increased during and after the Crusades. They prepared the way for the anti-Jewish legislation of
Pope Innocent III and formed the turning-point in medieval
anti-Semitism.
The Crusading period brought with it many narratives from Jewish sources. Among the more well known Jewish narratives are the chronicles of Solomon Bar Simson and Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan, The Narrative of the Old Persecutions by Mainz Anonymous, and Sefer Zekhirah, and The Book of Remembrance, by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn.
The Caucasus
In the Caucasus mountains of
Georgia, in the remote highland region of
Khevsureti, a tribe called the
Khevsurs are thought to possibly be direct descendants of a party of crusaders who got separated from a larger army and have remained in isolation with some of the crusader culture intact. Into the 20th century relics of armour, weaponry and chain mail were still being used and passed down in such communities. Russian serviceman and ethnographer
Arnold Zisserman who spent 25 years (1842-67) in the Caucasus, believed the exotic group of Georgian highlanders were descendants of the last Crusaders based on their customs, language, art and other evidence.
American traveler
Richard Halliburton (1900-1939) saw and recorded the customs of the tribe in 1935
[Sword and Buckler Fighting among the Lost Crusaders. Excerpts of Halliburton's observations].
For other uses of the term "crusade", see Crusade (disambiguation).The crusades were never referred to as such by their participants. The original crusaders were known by various terms, including
fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of St. Peter) or
milites Christi (knights of Christ). They saw themselves as undertaking an
iter, a journey, or a
peregrinatio, a pilgrimage, though pilgrims were usually forbidden from carrying arms. Like pilgrims, each crusader swore a vow (a
votus), to be fulfilled on successfully reaching Jerusalem, and they were granted a cloth cross (
crux) to be sewn into their clothes. This "taking of the cross", the
crux, eventually became associated with the entire journey; the word "crusade" (coming into English from the French
croisade, the Italian
crociata, or the Portuguese
cruzada) developed from this.
Since the 17th century, the term "crusade" has carried a connotation in the
West of being a righteous campaign, usually to "root out
evil", or to fight for a just cause. In a non-historical common or theological use, "crusade" has come to have a much broader emphatic or religious meaning —substantially removed from 'armed struggle.'
In a broader sense, "crusade" can be used, always in a
rhetorical and
metaphorical sense, to identify as righteous any
war that is given a
religious justification.
Ardent activists may also refer to their causes as "crusades," as in the "Crusade against Adult Illiteracy," or a "Crusade against Littering." In recent years, however, the use of "crusade" as a positive term has become less frequent in order to avoid giving offense to Muslims or others offended by the term. The term may also sarcastically or pejoratively characterize the
zealotry of agenda promoters, for example with the monicker "Public Crusader" or the campaigns "Crusade for a women's right to choose," and the "Crusade for prayer in public schools."
In Western Europe, the Crusades have traditionally been regarded by laypeople as heroic adventures, though the mass enthusiasm of common people was largely expended in the First Crusade, from which so few of their class returned. Today, the "
Saracen" adversary is crystallized in the lone figure of
Saladin; his adversary
Richard the Lionheart is, in the English-speaking world, the archetypical crusader king, while
Frederick Barbarossa (
illustration, below left) and
Louis IX fill the same symbolic niche in German and French culture. Even in contemporary areas, the crusades and their leaders were romanticized in popular literature; the
Chanson d'Antioche was a
chanson de geste dealing with the First Crusade, and the
Song of Roland, dealing with the era of the similarly romanticized
Charlemagne, was directly influenced by the experience of the crusades, going so far as to replace Charlemagne's historic
Basque opponents with Muslims. A popular theme for
troubadors was the knight winning the love of his lady by going on crusade in the east.
In the 14th century,
Godfrey of Bouillon was united with the
Trojan War and the adventures of
Alexander the Great against a backdrop for military and courtly heroics of the
Nine Worthies who stood as popular secular
culture heroes into the 16th century, when more critical literary tastes ran instead to
Torquato Tasso and Rinaldo and Armida, Roger and Angelica. Later, the rise of a more authentic sense of history among literate people brought the Crusades into a new focus for the Romantic generation in the romances of Sir
Walter Scott in the early 19th century. Crusading imagery could be found even in the
Crimean War, in which the United Kingdom and France were allied with the Muslim
Ottoman Empire, and in the
First World War, especially
Allenby's capture of Jerusalem in 1917 (
illustration, below right).
 |
Depiction of Richard I overlooking Jerusalem, in Punch Magazine, December 1917. The caption read: "At last my dream come true." |
In Spain, the popular reputation of the Crusades is outshone by the particularly Spanish history of the
Reconquista.
El Cid is the central figure.
Eastern Orthodoxy
Like Muslims,
Eastern Orthodox Christians also see the Crusades as attacks by the barbarian West, but centered on the sack of
Constantinople in 1204. Many relics and artifacts taken from Constantinople are still in Roman Catholic hands, in the
Vatican and elsewhere. Disagreement currently exists between modern Turks and Greeks over the claimant rights to the
Greek Horses on the facade of
St. Mark's in
Venice. The Greeks argue that the frieze is inherently part of Greek culture and identity, similar to the "Elgin" Marbles and the Turks counter that the freize originated from what is now modern-day
Istanbul. A picture of Turkish popular history of the Crusades can be assembled by compiling text of official Turkish brochures on Crusader fortifications in the Aegean coast and coastal islands. Countries of Central Europe, despite the fact that formally they also belonged to
Western Christianity, were the most skeptical about the idea of Crusades. Many cities in
Hungary were sacked by passing bands of Crusaders; one ruler of
Poland refused to join a Crusade, allegedly because of the lack of
beer in the
Holy land. Later on
Poland and
Hungary were themselves subject to conquest from the Crusaders (see
Teutonic Order), and therefore championed the notion that
pagans have the right to live in peace and have property rights to their lands (see
Pawel Wlodkowic).
*
Crusade art*
Crusader states*
List of principal Crusaders*
Military orders*
Religious Wars*
Shepherds' Crusade*
Tenth Crusade*
Crusade cycle*Alfred J. Andrea,
Encyclopedia of the Crusades. Greenwood Press, 2003.
* Jonathan Harris,
Byzantium and the Crusades. London, 2003
*Carole Hillenbrand,
The Crusades, Islamic Perspectives. New York, 2000.
*P.M. Holt,
The Age of the Crusades: The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517. New York, 1986.
*
Amin Maalouf,
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. 1983
*Thomas F. Madden,
The New Concise History of the Crusades. Lanham, 2005.
*Hans E. Mayer,
The Crusades. Oxford, 1965.
*Jonathan Riley-Smith,
The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. Philadelphia, 1986.
*Jonathan Riley-Smith,
The Oxford History of the Crusades. Oxford, 1995.
*Jonathan Riley-Smith,
What were the Crusades?. San Francisco, 2002.
*
Steven Runciman,
A History of the Crusades, 3 vols., Cambridge, 1951-1954.
*Kenneth Setton, ed.,
A History of the Crusades. Madison, 1969-1989 (
e-book online)
*Angeliki E. Laiou,
The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, (
e-book online), includes chapter on Historiography of the crusades.
*E.L. Skip Knox,
The Crusades, a virtual college course through
Boise State University.
*
Paul Crawford,
Crusades: A Guide to Online Resources, 1999.
