HIST 105-04, What Were the Crusades?, Fall 2008

Abstract

This Freshman Seminar is an introduction to the history and historiography of the crusading movement of the Middle Ages. In this class we will examine both the major crusading expeditions as well as the concept of the crusade as it developed following the calling of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095. Assigned readings will cover the social and military history of the crusading expeditions as well as the intellectual background to the ideology. The assigned readings also give consideration to the experience of crusading, the massacres of Jews by the crusading armies, and the reactions to the crusaders by Byzantine and Muslim populations. Attention will also be given to the problem of defining a crusade and how the crusading era helped to set the stage for later (and indeed modern) relations between the West and the Middle East.