Sword and Mitre: The Church’s Crusades (CH9600T)

Content

In this unit students will explore the crusading movement and the world of the crusaders from the first crusade in 1095 to the fall of Acre in 1291. Students will consider the various types of crusade – those against ‘infidels’, and those against ‘heretics’ – as well as the justifications that were provided for legitimizing ‘holy wars’. Attention will also be given to the emergence of the military orders, such as the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Teutonic Knights. In the final week(s) of the unit, students will consider the modern re-emergence of crusading rhetoric in the West's wars against Islam.

Learning outcomes

Unit sequence

Prerequisites: at least one foundational unit of CH

Pedagogy

This unit presumes a small degree of familiarity with Church history and with methods of historical interpretation. It builds on this foundational knowledge by providing exposure to textual and visual artifacts from the time, and to competing historiographical evaluations.

Indicative Bibliography

• Asbridge, Thomas, The Crusades: the War for the Holy Land, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).
• Baldwin, Marshall W., and Kenneth Setton (eds), A History of the Crusades, Volume 1: The First Hundred Years, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958, repr.2016).
• Bull, Marcus, and Damien Kempf (eds), Writing the Crusades: Text, Transmission and Memory, (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014).
• Cassidy-Welch, Megan, The Crusades and Violence, (Amsterdam University Press, 2023).
• Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).
• Kienzle, Beverley Mayne, ‘Preaching the Cross: Liturgy and Crusade Propaganda’, in Medieval Sermon Studies, 53 (2009), 11-32.
• Mayer, Hans Eberhard, The Crusades, (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
• Qurashi, Emren, and Michael Sells (eds), The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
• Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The Oxford History of the Crusades, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
• Wolff, Robert, Harry W. Hazard and Kenneth Setton (eds), A History of the Crusades, Volume 2: The Later Crusades, 1189-1311, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962, repr.2016).

Assessment