On the last Tuesday of November 1095, Pope Urban II delivered an electrifying speech that launched the First Crusade. Now, in The First Crusade, Thomas Asbridge offers a gripping account of a titanic three-year adventure filled with miraculous victories, greedy princes and barbarity on a vast scale.

The First Crusade

In this classic work, presented here with a new introduction, one of the world's most renowned crusade historians approaches this central topic of medieval history with freshness and impeccable research.

The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading

'O day so ardently desired! O time of times the most memorable! O deed before all other deeds!' The fall of Jerusalem in the summer of 1099 to an exhausted and starving army of Western European soldiers was one of the most extraordinary events of the Middle Ages.It was both the climax of a great wave of visionary Christian fervour and the beginning of what proved to be a futile and abortive attempt to implant a new European kingdom in an overwhelmingly Muslim world.The legacy of these events continues to be argued over more than nine centuries later.This remarkable collection of first-hand accounts brings to life the First Crusade in all its cruelty and strangeness.

Chronicles of the First Crusade

Sir Steven Runciman's three volume A History of the Crusades, one of the great classics of English historical writing, is being reissued. This volume deals completely with the First Crusade and the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem. As Runciman says in his preface: 'Whether we regard the Crusades as the most tremendous and most romantic of Christian adventures, or as the last of the barbarian invasions, they form a central fact in medieval history. Before their inception the centre of our civilization was placed in Byzantium and in the lands of the Arab caliphate. Before they faded out the hegemony in civilization had passed to western Europe. Out of this transference modern history was born.'

A History of the Crusades

Near the end of the eleventh century, Western Europe was in turmoil, beset by invasions from both north and south, by the breakdown of law and order, and by the laxity and ignorance of the clergy. Searching for a way out of the increasing anarchy, Pope Urban II launched an army of knights and peasants in 1095 to fight the Turks, who had seized the Holy Land. Michael Foss tells the stories of these men and women of the First Crusade, often in their own words, bringing the time and events brilliantly to life. Through these eyewitness accounts the clichés of history vanish; the distinctions between hero and villain blur; the Saracen is as base or noble, as brave or cruel, as the crusader. In that sense, the fateful clash between Christianity and Islam teaches us a lesson for our own time. Foss reveals that the attitudes and prejudices expressed by both Christians and Muslims in the First Crusade became the basic currency for all later exchanges—down to our present day conflicts and misunderstandings—between the two great monotheistic faiths of Mohammed and Jesus Christ.

People of the First Crusade

According to tradition, the First Crusade began at Pope Urban II’s instigation and culminated in July 1099, when western European knights liberated Jerusalem. But what if the First Crusade’s real catalyst lay far to the east of Rome? Countering nearly a millennium of scholarship, Peter Frankopan reveals the First Crusade’s untold history.

The First Crusade (1096-1099) was an extraordinary undertaking, the repercussions of which have reached down to the present day. This book re-examines the sources to provide a detailed analysis of the various social classes that participated in the expedition, and the tensions between them.

The Social Structure of the First Crusade

The First Crusade (1095-9) a mass of armed pilgrims aiming to march 4000 kilometers to the Holy Land to conquer Jerusalem was one of the most remarkable episodes in medieval history. Essays from nine leading academics offer new perspectives on two main themes: reconsideration of the evidence available to historians and appreciation of the Crusade's impact on the people of the eastern Mediterranean.

The success of the First Crusade, and its capture of Jerusalem in 1099, has been conventionally explained in terms of its ideological and political motivation. This book looks at the First Crusade primarily as a military campaign and asks why it was so successful. Modern writing about the crusade has tended to emphasise the moral dimension and the development of the idea of the crusade, but its fate was ultimately decided on the field of battle. Victory in the East looks at the nature of war at the end of the eleventh century and the military experience of all the contending parties in order to explain its extraordinary success. It is the first such examination, taking into account all other factors but emphasising the military.

Victory in the East

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.

Robert the Monk's History of the First Crusade

Perhaps no work of history written in the 20th century has done more to undermine an existing consensus and cause its readers to re-evaluate their own preconceptions than has Jonathan Riley-Smith's revisionist account of the motives of the first crusaders. Riley-Smith's thesis – based on extensive original research and firmly rooted in his refusal to uncritically accept the evidence or reasoning of earlier historians – is that the majority of the men who travelled to the east on crusade in the years 1098-1100 were primarily motivated by faith. This finding, which ran directly counter to at least four centuries of consensus that other motives, not least greed for land, were more important, has helped to stimulate exciting reappraisals of the whole crusading movement. Riley-Smith backed it up with forensic examination of the key crusader-inspiring speech delivered by Pope Urban II, looking to clarify the meanings of five competing contemporary accounts in order to understand how an initially simple, and rather confused, appeal for help became a sophisticated rationale for the concept of ‘just war.’

Chronicles the apocalyptic motivations and brutality of the First Crusade, which destroyed civilizations in the Near and Middle East.

Armies of Heaven

This study examines the logistics of the First Crusade. The author analyzes how its participants managed to feed and sustain themselves across diverse landscapes, travel through foreign kingdoms, and have the ability to capture the holy city of Jerusalem.

Logistics of the First Crusade

Analyzes the causes of the anti-Jewish violence of the First Crusade. The spiritual revival and rapid growth of the 10th-11th centuries led both to Church reform and the Crusades, an attempt to direct feudal violence against the enemies of the Church. Under the impact of popular frenzy and loss of control by the papacy, the traditional Church doctrine of both denigration and toleration of the Jews broke down. The crusading bands' ideological motivation is reflected in contemporary Hebrew chronicles and in two Christian accounts. Discusses the Jewish response of martyrdom in preference to conversion. Contends that 1096 was not a turning-point - the destroyed communities were quickly resettled, and in later Crusades anti-Jewish excesses were prevented by the Church. The massacres indicated a change in Christian attitudes, including the view of Jews as enemies of Christendom, ritual murder accusations, and the demand for the Jews' total destruction or conversion. The appendix (pp. 223-297) contains an English translation of the texts of the two chronicles.

European Jewry and the First Crusade

This volume reveals the ways in which the First Crusade changed the direction of warfare, religion, and perhaps history itself. By highlighting the theme of prophecy, the volume deepens students' understanding of the crusading ethos. The introduction situates the First Crusade in context, from Constantine to the event's twelfth-century chroniclers. The documents provide and often juxtapose a variety of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish viewpoints, offering insight into the religious, political, and personal motivations of those involved and illuminating the Crusade's extensive impact and legacy.

This new translation offers a faithful yet accessible English-language rendering of the twelfth-century Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolomitanorum, the earliest known Latin account of the First Crusade. The exemplar for all later histories and retellings of the First Crusade, it is filled with vivid descriptions of the hardships suffered by the crusaders, deeds of personal heroism, courtly intrigues, betrayal and cowardice, and a relentless faith that would see the attainment of the desired goal: the capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders in 1099. It is also a sweeping tale that swiftly moves from the first preaching of the crusade by Pope Urban II, to the ragtag and ultimately doomed effort of the popular People's Crusade, and then to the more disciplined and concerted campaign by the French and Norman nobility that led to the conquest of the Holy Land by the crusaders. Based on the latest scholarly research, including a substantive introduction that explores the questions surrounding the Gesta and that sets it in its historical context, this definitive translation will bring the First Crusade and its era to life for all readers.

The Deeds of the Franks and Other Jerusalem-bound Pilgrims

In 1996 the world commemorates the 900th anniversary of the First Crusade or, more precisely, of the pogroms unleashed by the crusade upon the Jews of the Rhineland. In the Year 1096... presents a clear, highly readable chronicle of the events of 1096. Noted teacher and historian Robert Chazan brings readers to critical moments in Jewish history, illuminating the events themselves, their antecedents, and their far-reaching consequences. Equally important, his book assesses the significance of the events of 1096 within the larger framework of Jewish history, including both the scope of persecution and the record of Jewish resistance. He has created a dramatic portrait of the clash between three conflicting forces in medieval Europe: the German crusaders, the Rhineland burghers, and the Rhineland Jews. His book provides an extensive look at the Christian assaults and the intense Jewish responses, with much material translated directly from remarkable Hebrew narratives which are admirable for both the vividness of their description and the complexity of the portrait they provide. Chazan tells the story of 1096 in "grays, " not blacks and whites; that is, he relates stories of Christian enemies, but also of Christian friends, and of Jewish martyrs, but also of Jewish negotiators and converts. The author devotes the second half of In the Year 1096... to tracing these events through the intervening nine centuries of Jewish history. In the second part he surveys the Jewish perception of 1096 over the ages, including both the neglect of these events in some quarters and their emphasis in others; he places 1096 within the lengthy history of anti-Jewish actions and thinking, and examines theunusual behaviors of the Rhineland Jews within the context of historic Jewish responses to persecution.

In the Year 1096

Closely focused on the Hebrew First-Crusade narratives, this text examines the three surviving accounts of the crusaders assaults on the Rhineland Jewish communities in 1096. These accounts are compared with earlier Jewish history writing and with contemporary crusade historiography.

God, Humanity, and History

A pioneering approach to contemporary historical writing on the First Crusade, looking at the texts as cultural artefacts rather than simply for the evidence they contain.

Writing the Early Crusades

Excerpt from The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants When Henry Adams sought to triangulate the progress of modern civilization he fixed his historical transit at Mont St. Michel and Chartres in the days of the First Crusade and sighted from them across the centuries. No earlier place in the Middle Ages would have afforded a foundation of equal breadth in its description of society. The spiritual character of the Crusade lent a halo to even the most commonplace details connected with it and thus gave to them a literary immortality hitherto confined rather narrowly to matters of ecclesiastical interest. The widespread enthusiasm for the movement and participation in it assured its commemoration not only in monuments of stone but in a variety of writings as well. The authors of these accounts were neither sophisticated nor highly trained in their art. The picture of society which they drew, though relatively complete, has stood forth with all the simple and stark realism of a charcoal sketch, full of feeling, action, and scenery, but lacking in finish. The polish and finish have come with the later centuries. For those, however, who would understand that society even in its more finished form, a knowledge of the preliminary sketch is still essential. In these lack-o-Latin days students seeking to accomplish this find their path too much beset with linguistic obstacles. It is to ameliorate these difficulties that the present volume has been compiled. The plan of this work will be found reminiscent of Archers Crusade of Richard I and the Parallel Source Problems of Mediaeval History, The author gratefully acknowledges indebtedness to both. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The First Crusade (1095–9) has often been characterised as a head-to-head confrontation between the forces of Christianity and Islam. For many, it is the campaign that created a lasting rupture between these two faiths. Nevertheless, is such a characterisation borne out by the sources? Engagingly written and supported by a wealth of evidence, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade offers a major reinterpretation of the crusaders' attitudes towards the Arabic and Turkic peoples they encountered on their journey to Jerusalem. Nicholas Morton considers how they interpreted the new peoples, civilizations and landscapes they encountered; sights for which their former lives in Western Christendom had provided little preparation. Morton offers a varied picture of cross cultural relations, depicting the Near East as an arena in which multiple protagonists were pitted against each other. Some were fighting for supremacy, others for their religion, and many simply for survival.

Encountering Islam on the First Crusade

One of the most famous military campaigns in history, to many the Crusades were the First Crusade. This book details the first 'armed pilgrimage' to the Holy Land, the only Crusade that really succeeded, resulting in the creation of four so-called Crusader States in the Middle East, repercussions of which can still be felt today.

The First Crusade, 1096-99

The cataclysmic collision of two great religions As the Seljuk Turks pressed ever closer to the Byzantine Empire, the stage became set for a conflict of faith and political interest which would bathe the known world with blood and create lasting animosities the ramifications of which would be felt through the centuries to the present day. The original ideological mission clearly offered opportunities of the most material kind which were readily apparent to the soldiers of fortune of Northern Europe. What began, for some, as essentially a relief mission quickly acquired a new objective, which because of its inspirational as well as its financial potential soon became its primary one-the taking of the city of Jerusalem, sacred to both religious factions. The First Crusade was to become the precursor of many wars of belief and power between the West and East. It brought to the fore men of great military ability, avarice and influence on both sides. It was a long, hard campaign fought across the Middle East and brought collisions in open battle and the sieges of great cities and citadels-both assaulted and defended. This book chronicles that crusade's history.

1ST CRUSADE

From the author of "Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade", this book offers a wide-ranging and innovative survey of crusading warfare, and is intended as a standard reference for students and professional historians alike

Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000-1300

Description of the personal history and exploits of the individuals who led, recorded or were otherwise notable in the First Crusade, the only crusade that succeeded in capturing Jerusalem.

This accessible guide is packed with activities to build the skills required. It gives students a motivating way to prepare thoroughly for their exams.

OCR a Level History As

"Brings to life a turbulent period of history, and examines the religious fervor, motivations and ambitions of the crusading knights and their followers."--Publishers descriptions.

The Illustrated History of the First Crusades

Despite various studies on the development of crusading thought, the First Crusade itself has not been properly examined from this perspective. Drawing on a range of European chronicles and charter collections, this book discusses the launching of the First Crusade, the practical experience of the crusaders and the interpretations placed upon this experience by contemporary commentators.

The First Crusade and Idea of Crusading

The First Crusade, launched in 1096, was a pivotal moment in medieval history, marked by a fervent Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land in an effort to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim control. This military campaign, endorsed by Pope Urban II, witnessed a diverse coalition of European knights, soldiers, and peasants embarking on a perilous journey across Europe and the Middle East. After overcoming numerous challenges and battles, the Crusaders eventually captured Jerusalem in 1099, establishing several Christian states in the region. The First Crusade's impact on the balance of power in the Holy Land and its historical legacy remain significant, making it a critical chapter in the annals of the medieval era and a precursor to subsequent Crusades.