Book description
The story of how a group of warriors, driven by faith, greed and
wanderlust, carved out new Christian-ruled states in the Middle East is
one of the most extraordinary of all epics. The crusaders' stunning
initial success started a sequence of great Crusades, each with its own
story, that fundamentally shaped the Christian and Muslim worlds for two
centuries, until the last Crusader castles were finally expunged. The
energy and commitment that sent army after army into the eastern
Mediterranean also led to the invasion and conversion of Central and
Baltic Europe, Spain, Portugal, the destruction of the Cathars in
Provence and the settlement of America. Told with great verve and
authority, God's War is the definitive account of a fascinating but also
horrifying story. 'We are still living with the images and legends of
the crusades…Tyerman tells us how the Church set about preaching the
crusades, exploiting the perennial pessimism and guilt of the European
nobility of the Middle Ages. He shows how crusading ideology penetrated
the religious sensibility of the period, as well as its secular fiction
and poetry…Of all the modern histories of the crusades it is the
shrewdest, the most reliable and the most complete.' - The Spectator
Christopher Tyerman is a Fellow in History at Hertfod College, Oxford,
and a Lecturer in Medieval History at New College, Oxford. He is the
author of
England and the
Crusades
.
