The Crusades

The Crusades of the Middle Ages were fought by "Latin" Christians against peoples who they believed were threatening the existence of their Christian faith. Some of these campaigns were against Muslims, some were against other Christians, and some were against pagans. Topically oriented chapters backed up by biographies, primary documents, maps, and illustrations make this an ideal introductory reference resource to this pivotal period in European medieval history.

HELEN NICHOLSON is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Cardiff, Wales, UK. She is the author of The Knights Hospitaller (2001), The Knights Templar: A New History (2001), Love, War and the Grail: Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance, 1150 - 1500 (2001), and a number of books and articles on the Military Orders and on the Crusades in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. In 1997 she published a translation oof an early thirteenth-century account of the Third Crusade: Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the "Itinerarium Peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi", and she edited the proceedings of the second international Clerkenwell conference on the Military Orders: The Military Orders, vol. 2: Welfare and Warfare (1998). She is currently researching into the activities and reputation of the Knights Hospitaller in the British Isles in the fourteenth century.