ABSTRACT
The Christian missions to the Muslims in the Near East during the Central Middle Ages have already attracted much attention from historians,1 but as yet no real attempt has been made to analyse the relationship between those who advocated peaceful conversion by means o f preaching and teaching, in other words a programme o f missionary work, and the crusaders, who sought to defeat the enemies o f the faith in battle. In the past, historians have tended to portray advocates o f missions as opponents o f the crusades and it has been suggested that by the late thirteenth century, as a result o f a series o f Christian defeats in the Near East, the missionary ideal had won a great deal o f support and that this was one o f the factors which contributed towards the decline o f the crusading movement.2 The aim o f this paper is to challenge this thesis. The first step towards this reappraisal will be to examine the attitude o f certain prominent supporters o f a policy o f peaceful conversion towards the crusades.
