ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE – THE CRUSADERS PART II

The mass of the common people were poor; the bourgeoisie had already become rich, but, like the bourgeoisie everywhere, was wholly self-regarding. The nobility practised a certain ostentatious extravagance, while the prelates of the Church frequently copied the nobility, both in their luxurious habits and their addiction to warfare. The country was constantly ravaged by […]

Read more

Hattin: The Battle

The army of Jerusalem customarily carried the True Cross into battle, and both sides saw the moment of its capture at Hattin as decisive in Guy’s defeat. Salah ad-Din capturing the True Cross at the Battle of Hattin.   Saladin drew Guy into a long march across open territory, which favoured his highly mobile tactics […]

Read more

Bohemund I of Antioch (d. 1111)

Leader of the Italian Norman contingent in the First Crusade (1096-1099) and subsequently prince of Antioch (1098-1111). Bohemund was the nickname of Mark, a son of Robert Guiscard, the Norman conqueror of southern Italy, by his marriage to the Norman Alverada. Guiscard repudiated this first marriage in 1058 in order to marry the Lombard princess […]

Read more

Hospitallers and Knights

Ruins of the Hospitaller church at Bethgibelin, the first military donation to the Order (1136). According to tradition Raymond du Puy, who was elected to succeed Gerard, was a typical representative of the class from which the Hospitallers were now being recruited: a Frankish knight who had come to Jerusalem in the First Crusade and […]

Read more

Innocent III’s expansion of crusading

Cathars being expelled from Carcassonne in 1209. In this group, women appear to be nearly as numerous as men and the Crusaders seem to give women equally harsh treatment for their beliefs. By 1212 there were examples of the failures of the knights nearer to home. In the south of France a Crusade was under […]

Read more

Christian Crusaders Capture Constantinople

Pope Innocent III inaugurated the Fourth Crusade after Saladin’s empire began to disintegrate. Tragically, however, the crusading army of mostly French nobles was diverted to Constantinople to intervene in Byzantine politics. In 1204, the Christian crusaders stormed and sacked one of Christendom’s greatest cities. This description of the conquest of Constantinople is taken from a […]

Read more

Fall of Jerusalem 1187

Jerusalem was now under the command of Balian of Ibelin, who had gone there from Tyre to fetch his wife and children. He had been pressed into command by the Christian citizens, all of whose leaders had fallen at the Horns of Hattin and who, largely as a result of the reported conduct of their […]

Read more

Hospitallers

“Order of the Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem.” An international Military Order originally comprised of male nurses devoted to providing succor to Christian pilgrims in the “Holy Land.” It was founded in 1070 by Italian merchants from Amalfi. Following the capture of Jerusalem by the First Crusade the nursing brothers hired a number of […]

Read more

Hermann von Salza – Out of the Ashes

Unable to compete with other Military Orders in Syria, the Teutonic Knights fought in Armenia instead. In 1210 nearly the whole order was killed, leaving just 20 knights. Hermann von Salza essentially refounded the order in 1226, aided by Emperor Friedrich II (“Barbarossa”). They were given lands in Sicily and eastern Europe, a transaction approved […]

Read more

King Richard – prepares for the Crusade

Richard stood over his father’s corpse in silence. He looked down at a face marked by nearly half a century of trouble and glory. Henry II had died a miserable death: abandoned and embittered. The last words he had spoken to Richard were a vicious hiss in his ear as the two men embraced in […]

Read more