Category: Crusades

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]