Crusading Europe: Essays in Honour of Christopher Tyerman

Outremer. Studies in the Crusades and the Latin East

by Jessalynn Bird, Gregory Lippiatt (Editor)

Christopher Tyerman was born in 1953 and educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford. He took a First Class degree from the latter in 1974, before completing his D.Phil. under the supervision of Lionel Butler in 1981. The same year, he was awarded the Alexander Prize by the Royal Historical Society for his article on Marino Sanudo the Elder and the promotion of crusading in the fourteenth century. While working on his doctorate, he served as a lecturer at the University of York and a Junior Research Fellow at the Queen's College, Oxford. Following his fellowship at Queen's, he was awarded the Murray Senior Fellowship at Exeter College, and his catholic service to the University encompassed teaching at New, St Hilda's, and Hertford. At the same time, he returned to Harrow, becoming Senior Tutor in History and writing the comprehensive A History of Harrow School (2000). He was elected a fellow of Hertford College in 2006 and appointed Professor of the History of the Crusades in 2015. He has written extensively on the crusades with particular emphasis on their place in the wider context of medieval history, including The A Very Short Introduction (2005), The Debate on the Crusades (2011), How to Plan a Crusade (2015), and the magisterial and much-translated God's War (2006). The image of the crusades often connotes exoticism and foreign adventuring.?However, the underlying motivations, daily practicalities, and lasting impact of the crusades on their European birthplace are equally important. How did European anxieties, prejudices, and priorities propel the crusading movement? How did crusaders understand and manage the particularly European geographical, legal, and financial dimensions of their campaigns? How did the crusades mark medieval European architecture, spirituality, and literature? This volume not only engages these provocative questions but also serves as a monument to the career of Christopher Tyerman, who has done so much to integrate European and global crusading history. The collection of essays gathered here by leading crusade historians, Tyerman's friends and former students, furthers study of the crusades within their European context, highlighting intriguing new directions for teaching and researching the crusades and their impact.

344 pages, Hardcover

Published June 20, 2019

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Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of one chapter in this book - John France's article on the the thinking of Pope Urban II in appealing for holy war at Clermont in 1095. France is a storied crusade historian and his article does not disappoint. In clear and accessible language, he summarises the historiography of Urban's call at Clermont, starting with Carl Erdmann in the 1930s and his successors. France then considers how the church came to reconcile the pacifist nature of Christianity with the concept of violence committed in defence of the church.
France's argument is that Urban did not consider the theology of holy violence at Clermont. Urban's appeal was centred on the arrangement he offered - that going on crusade could substitute for all penance. France considers that Urban's offer clarified the church's convoluted position about penance for killing in war and underpinned the huge response to Urban's call at Clermont.
In this essay, France makes a fascinating and well-argued contribution to a critical area of crusade historiography.