History A New Yorker cartoon published around the time of the invasion of Iraq showed two crusader knights gazing down from a hilltop onto the Holy Land. "Of course," one is saying, "it's all about olive oil really."
It is a gentle reminder, as is this book, of the absurdity of seeing the Crusades as a precursor of contemporary problems in the Middle East. Muslim commentators sometimes call the American-led allies "Crusaders" (a term of abuse), and some Western leaders certainly demonstrate some of the same arrogance, ignorance, insensitivity, and self-righteousness displayed by many Crusaders. But on the whole that is where the similarity ends. The Crusades were not about olive oil; that is, they were nothing like modern commercial imperialism. Most crusaders pursued the twin goals of defending Christendom and winning personal salvation. But that was not how it appeared to the Muslim world, and this book is a timely reminder of what lies behind current Muslim images of westerners.
The Crusades were a formative episode in the history of Europe as well as the Middle East; indeed, they helped define the East and West of popular imagination. A contemporary called the First Crusade "the greatest event since the Resurrection"; David Hume, in the 18th century, called them "the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation". Most commentators since then have tended to agree with Hume. John Paul II thought the Crusades had to be apologised for; Christopher Tyerman, a master of the memorable phrase, compares them to "a lingering bad smell in a lavishly refurbished stately home".
For those without much stamina, Tyerman has written the excellent Oxford University Press book The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction. But it is the monumental God's War that is the worthy climax of a scholarly career focused on the Crusades. It is the most detailed narrative since Sir Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades (still in print, but more than 50 years old). The joy is in that detail: the glimpses of personalities, the evocation of individual heroism and tragedy, the vignettes of life in the crusader world.
The Crusades began with the preaching of Pope Urban II at Clermont in 1095. In 1099 Jerusalem was taken, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded. Jerusalem was retaken in 1187 by Saladin, but was recovered by the Christians in 1229. In some ways the Emperor Frederick II was the most successful of crusaders, coming to the coastal stronghold of Acre in 1228 with a small force of knights, against the wishes of Pope Gregory IX, who had excommunicated him. He won Jerusalem back by diplomatic means, entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and "in a memorable piece of political and religious theatre", crowning himself there with his own hands. He seemed a heroic and almost mythic figure - stupor mundi: "wonder of the world" - to those who had never met him; one who had said that he was "red-faced, balding and myopic". There were not only the major international expeditions to the Holy Land (the First, the Second, and so on), but smaller unnumbered ones too, and other campaigns that papal approval called crusades:expeditions against Muslims in Spain, pagans in the Baltic states, and heretics in southern France. The Christian colony established in the Holy Land was lost irrevocably in 1291, but until the 16th century some people dreamt of recovering Jerusalem, while others simply used the cover of "crusading" to pursue their political aims. The Teutonic Knights, who were trying to bring Christianity to the pagans in the north, went on attacking the Lithuanians long after 1386, when they had converted to Christianity.
The great strength of Tyerman's book does not lie in the descriptions of the military campaigns; those allergic to military history will find much to enjoy. A good part of the book is about what is happening at home in Europe: the recruitment drives, the changing public opinion, the squabbles over leadership, and then, in the aftermath of each failed crusade (because most of them failed, often tragically), the impact of these failures on those at home, or those deserted in their outposts in the Middle East - in Outremer, "the land beyond the sea". Some crusaders won glory and martyrdom; many more died ingloriously of disease or wounds; very few profited on this earth. And their families frequently suffered as much as they did. Tyerman writes that what most of the wives left at home really needed for protection was not a chastity belt, which anyway was only invented in the 17th century, but a good lawyer. Too many wives and widows saw their estates stripped from them by unscrupulous relatives.
There was hardly a country in Europe or the Mediterranean world that was unaffected by the Crusades. They changed European attitudes to Europe itself, and to warfare; they gave the Papacy unimagined authority; they helped form nations such as France and Spain. And they taught Europeans to demonise the outsider. You will not find a saner or more balanced guide to all this than God's War.
Edward James is Professor of Medieval History at University College Dublin. He is the author of books on the early history of France and Britain, and his book on Barbarian Europe will be published next year by Longman
God's War: A New History of the Crusades By Christopher Tyerman Penguin/Allen Lane, 1,024pp. £30