Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

And this was far from the last mention of the C-word. Crusading outlived the Middle Ages, and remains today a favored trope of the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and Islamist terrorists, all of whom cleave to the decidedly shaky idea that it has defined Christian and Muslim relations for a millennium. They are not right, but they are not original in their error either. Crusading—a bastard hybrid of religion and violence, adopted as a vehicle for papal ambition but eventually allowed to run as it pleased, where it pleased, and against whom it pleased, was one of the Middle Ages’ most successful and enduringly poisonous ideas. Its survival is a sign of both its genius and of the readiness of people both then and now to throw themselves into conflict in the name of a higher cause.