ABSTRACT
The author of The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, Jonathan Riley-Smith, was born in 1938 into a prosperous family, beginning his education at the elite Eton College and going on to Trinity College, Cambridge. Married to Louise Riley-Smith, an accomplished portrait artist, he is now a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. The First Crusade is an examination of the development of the concept of Crusading, from the initial call to arms by the head of the European branch of Christianity Pope Urban II. In 1095, to the gathering of armies and pilgrims throughout Europe, and the aftermath of the successful First Crusade, when Western European chroniclers began writing the first histories of the campaign, even as more armies were sent eastwards. The aims of the First Crusade expanded almost immediately to the (wildly) optimistic goal of liberating the city of Jerusalem from the Islamic Arab forces then holding it.
