The Crusades: Holly War, Piety and Politics in Christendom from the First Crusade to the Reconquista

Crusading fervour gripped Europe for more than 200 years and yet, almost a millennium later, we continue to question the crusaders' was it purely spiritual reward or did greed play a part? What did knights from Western Europe have to gain from a hugely risky and expensive missions to the the Holy Land? The Crusades expertly takes the reader into the mindset of crusading knights, exploring, on the one hand, the role played by pilgrimage, penance and piety in Christian life and, on the other, the politics of Western Europe, the Papacy, Byzantium and the Sunni and Shi'a groups in the Middle East.

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