ABSTRACT
My interest in the history of the crusades goes back many years and has formed an important part of my broader research on the religious life and institutions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Of the 15 chapters in this volume, including the two appendices, eight (Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7-10, 12) are revised reprints of previously published articles, four (Chapters 2, 13, and the two appendices) and the third part of Chapter 1 – over a quarter of the entire volume – are published here for the first time, two (Chapters 5 and 6) are rewritten versions of parts of a published article, and one (Chapter 11) combines two brief articles published at a distance of 50 years. Since each paper was written separately and designed to be read as a self-contained entity, there are inevitably some overlaps and repetitions, as of a passage from the Würzburg chronicle and a Fleury charter, which are relevant to more than one subject. The style has been made as consistent as possible, using the past rather than the present tense (in all except Chapter 10) and avoiding the first person plural and the term ‘recent’ (now often not so recent!). The use of capital letters has been reduced, especially for the church, the points of the compass, and the crusades, in order to avoid giving the impression that they were an institution at a time when they were still events. The same reason accounts for the title Crusaders and Crusading [rather than the Crusades] in the Twelfth Century.
