Reddit Reddit reviews The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (The Middle Ages Series)

We found 3 Reddit comments about The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (The Middle Ages Series). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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3 Reddit comments about The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (The Middle Ages Series):

u/reliable_information · 17 pointsr/AskHistorians

The common belief among Crusade historians is that yes, he was at least in a way.

Now was he thinking "In 1095, I will make a speech and send the armies of Europe to die in some desert 2000 miles away." No. But what he had been trying to figure out for years was ways to vent European aristocratic violence into a landmass that wasn't European.

Prior to his speech at Clermont, Urban had supported several smaller campaigns into Islamic Spain in an attempt to reclaim land lost centuries earlier, he also knew that this served as a good outlet for aggression between nobles in southern France, thus keeping the general peace in Christian Europe and maintaining the Peace of God. He did this by telling the nobles along with the glory and looting that they normally got through killing each other, they would also be doing a service to God and do penance for all their sins up to that point, something previously only attainable by monks. This was several years before the speech at Clermont that triggered the Crusade.

Before the council of Clermont, Urban had received an envoy from Emperor Alexios of the Byzantine Empire, asking that he send assistance to help reclaim land lost to Seljuk turks. Knowing that proto-crusading had worked in the past in Spain in small numbers, Urban devised the idea of a large scale crusade, urging nobles to send forces into the Holy Land to either reclaim Jerusalem or aid their christian brothers, depending on what record of the speech you read.

Back to your question. Before this, the largest scale military action taken was the Norman Conquest 30 years earlier and the crusade outdid or at least compared with this in number strength, and greatly outweighed it logistics. At the same time, Urban and his predecessors had been juggling the aristocratic trends of wealth through fighting and honor through fighting by trying to enforce the Peace of God. Urban had been trying to find a solution to this problem for some time, as seen in his support of conquests into the Iberian peninsula. When he received the envoy and basically got the go ahead to tell nobles to head the middle east, everything just sorta fell together.

If you want more detailed information, check out Jonathon Riley Smith's "The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading"


Edited for grammar and small mistakes...I'm tired and should be writing a different history paper.

u/SovietSteve · 3 pointsr/papertowns

Hey mate, John Riley Smith is probably the most respected academic on the topic, I've read 2 of his books -- this was the better one:
https://www.amazon.com/First-Crusade-Idea-Crusading-Middle/dp/0812220765

u/ShwayNorris · 1 pointr/subredditcancer

Sure. For a decent overview I recommend The Crusades: A History coupled with The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading.

You can also read through The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land but I didn't find it as informative.