Christopher Tyerman - Gods War: A New History of the Crusades

PENGUIN BOOKS

GODS WAR

A magisterial new history of the crusades Gods War is rich is reassessments of individuals and institutions involved
The Times Literary Supplement

A timely reminder of what lies behind current Muslim images of westerners you will not find a saner or more balanced guide to all this than Gods WarIrish Times

Told with passion and academic flair, Tyermans definitive and engrossing chronicle of the Crusades reads like a centuries-old epic of war, arrogance and the clash of cultures. Its place should be assured on the bookshelves of all politicians Western Mail

Confident descriptions, full of insight written with dry humour Sunday Telegraph

This generations definitive history Chicago Tribune

A measured focus on the ideas and actions of people so different from ourselves Tyerman writes well, sustaining interest as he moves through all the interwoven plot lines Financial Times

Displays massive erudition and patient synthesis surely reflects the state of historical knowledge about the Crusades better than any other book New York Sun

Writes fluently and well a serious, competent and well-written survey Tablet

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Tyerman is a Fellow in History at Hertford College, Oxford, and a lecturer in Medieval History at New College, Oxford. He is the author of England and the Crusades, The Invention of the Crusades and The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction.

CHRISTOPHER TYERMAN

A New History of the Crusades

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Allen Lane 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2007
1

Copyright Christopher Tyerman, 2006
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Maps 1 to 17 and 21 to 23 by Reg Piggott are reproduced by permission of
The Folio Society Ltd. Other maps are by Andrew Farmer.

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

EISBN: 9780141904313

. Jerusalem and its environs c.1100 (Corbis/Uppsala University Library, Sweden/Dagli Orti)

. Urban II consecrating the high altar at Cluny, October 1095 (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris [Ms Lat. 17716 Fol. 91])

. Peter the Hermit leading his crusaders (British Library, London [Ms Eggerton 1500 Fol. 45v])

. Alexius I Comnenus, emperor of Byzantium 10811118 (Bridgeman Art Library)

. The church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem idealized in later medieval western imagination (British Library, London [Ms Eggerton 1070 Fol. 5v])

. The front cover of the Psalter of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem (British Library, London [Ms Eggerton 1139])

. Saladin: a contemporary Arab view (British Library, London)

. The battle of Hattin, 4 July 1187: Saladin seizing the True Cross (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge [Ms 26 Fol. 140])

. Frederick I Barbarossa, emperor of Germany, receiving a copy of Robert of Rheimss popular history of the First Crusade (Scala, Florence)

. Embarking on crusade, from the statutes of the fourteenth-century chivalric Order of the Knot (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris [Ms Fr. 4274 Fol. 6])

. Women helping besiege a city, as at the siege of Acre, 1190 (British Library, London [Ms 15268 Fol. 101v])

. Joshua, in the guise of a Frankish knight, liberates Gibeon from the Five Kings, from an illuminated Bible c.124454 (Piermont Morgan Library/Scala, Florence)

Military orchestra of the kind employed by Turkish, Kurdish and Mamluk commanders (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris [Ms Arabe 5847 Fol. 94])

. Pope Innocent III (Scala, Florence)

. Venice c.1300 (Bodleian Library, Oxford/The Art Archive [Bodley 264 fol. 218r])

. Innocent III and the Albigensian Crusade (British Library, London [Ms Royal 16 GVI Fol. 347v])

. Moors fighting Christians in thirteenth-century Spain (The Art Archive/Real Monasterio del Escorial, Spain/Dagli Orti)

. A clash between Frankish and Egyptian forces outside Damietta, June 1218, from Matthew Pariss Chronica Majora c.1255 (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge [Ms 16 Fol. 54v])

. The capture of the Tower of Chains, August 1218, and the fall of Damietta, November 1219, from Matthew Pariss Chronica Majora c.1255 (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge)

. Frederick II, emperor, king of Germany 121250 (AKG Images)

. Louis IX of France captures Damietta, June 1249, from a manuscript produced at Acre c.1280 (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris [Ms Fr. 2628 Fol. 328v])

. Outremers nemesis: mamluk warriors training (British Library, London [Ms Add 18866 Fol. 140])

. Outremers nemesis: A Turkish cavalry squadron (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris [Ms Arabe 5847 Fol. 19])

. The battle of La Forbie, October 1244 (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge [Ms 16 Fol. 170])

. Matthew Paris imagines the Mongols as cannibalistic savages, Chronica Majora, c.1255 (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge [Ms 16 Fol. 166])

. The fall of Tripoli to the Mamluks, April 1289 (British Library, London [Ms Add 27695 Fol. 5])

. Charles V of France entertains Charles IV of Germany during a banquet in Paris in 1378 (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris [Ms Fr. 2813 Fol. 473v])

. Andrea Bonaiutis fresco The Church Militant, in Santa Maria Novella, Florence (Scala, Florence)

. The failed Ottoman Turkish siege of Rhodes, 1480 (Bibliothque Nationale, Paris [Ms Lat. 6067 Fol. 80v])

. Mehmed II the Conqueror, by Gentile Bellini, 1480/81 (National Gallery, London)

. The battle of Lepanto, 1571 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich)

This book has taken longer than even the most sluggish crusade to prepare and complete. I must record my thanks and gratitude to the Trustees of the Leverhulme Trust for the award of a Research Fellowship for the year 19989, which allowed me to begin to marshal evidence and ideas for this project. My agent Jonathan Lloyd has proved a tactful and potent warrior in my interests. The invitation to write this sort of book came from Simon Winder, who could not have imagined how long, in many senses, it would turn out to be. His patience and encouragement have been wonderfully sustaining. Indirectly, I have been thinking, working, teaching and writing towards this book for thirty years. Inevitably the debts to friends, colleagues, pupils and other scholars are legion and irredeemable. In particular, I should like to register my obligation for discussion, ideas, criticism and opportunities to air views to Malcolm Barber, Toby Barnard, Peter Biller, Jessalynin Bird, the late Lionel Butler, Jeremy Catto, Eric Christiansen, Gary Dickson, Barrie Dobson, Jean Dunbabin, Peter Edbury, Geoffrey Ellis, L.S. Ettre, the late Richard Fletcher, John Gillingham, Timothy Guard, Bernard Hamilton, Ruth Harris, Catherine Holmes, Norman Housley, Colin Imber, Kurt Villads Jensen, Jeremy Johns, Andrew Jotischky, Maurice Keen, Anthony Luttrell, Simon Lloyd, Jose-Juan Lopez-Portillo, Dominic Luckett, John Maddicott, Hans Mayer, James Morwood, Alan Murray, Sandy Murray, Torben Nielsen, the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education Crusades class of the summer of 2003, David Parrott, Jonathan Phillips, the late John Prestwich, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Miri Rubin, Jonathan Shepard and Mark Whittow. The intellectual vibrancy of my colleagues and pupils in Hertford College and New College provide the most stimulating of creative environments. The Principal and Fellows of Hertford gave me academic shelter for many locust years. Toby Barnard and Peter Biller have long provided personal support and intellectual stimulus with rare companionability. The responsibility for introducing me to the crusades rests with the improbable quintet of the late Ralph Bathurst, David Parry, Eric Christiansen, Maurice Keen and the late Lionel Butler, alike in little except inspiration and civility. I alone can be held accountable for the errors that stubbornly remain like mouse hairs in medieval bread. Simon Winder, editor nonpareil, and his team at Penguin UK have proved a revelation of amenable, intelligent and efficient publishing. I am grateful to those who have pointed out errata in the First Edition, in particular Paul Cobb and Eric Christiansen. For tolerating the distraction of what must at times have seemed another sibling, the book is dedicated to those most healthily but supportively sceptical of the virtues and merits of this work and its author, Elizabeth, Edward and Thomas, with love.