The word crusade didn’t exist in the Middle Ages. Those who answered the Catholic Church’s summons to holy war called themselves pilgrims, participants in a quest they considered more spiritual than martial. Those who became the targets of their campaigns, of course, had a different take on their motives. Explore the experiences and convictions both of the Christian Europeans who became “crusaders” and of the people—European and Middle Eastern, Muslim and Jewish, Christian and pagan—whom they encountered. Using new approaches and evidence, historian Janna Bianchini examines common assumptions about the Crusades and their complicated legacies for the modern world.
9:30 to 10:45 a.m. The Invention of Crusading
Some 100,000 people embarked on the First Crusade—a truly unprecedented response to Pope Urban II’s summons in 1095. What caused a reaction of such fervor and scale? Discover how the stage was set for the origin of the crusading movement, as well as the disasters and the reported miracles of the First Crusade itself.
11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Survival in the Crusader States
With outposts established in the Middle East, crusading Europeans came into daily contact with people of other faiths—Jewish, Muslim, and Eastern Christian—often for the first time in their lives. How did they attempt to assimilate or subjugate the residents of their new dominions? How did their subjects and neighbors respond? Learn how the Second Crusade reimagined Christian warfare some 50 years after the crusading movement began.
12:15 to 1:30 p.m. Lunch (participants provide their own)
1:30 to 2:45 p.m. Holy War and Jihad
The Third Crusade was a pageant of larger-than-life figures: dashing Richard the Lionheart, king of England; sly Philip Augustus, king of France; and gallant Salah ad-Din, sultan of a newly united Syria and Egypt. Their confrontation reveals how ideas about Christian holy war and Islamic jihad were changing during the crusading era.
3 to 4:15 p.m. The Transformation of the Crusading Ideal
On the Fourth Crusade, an army destined for the Holy Land instead conquered Constantinople, capital of Christian Byzantium. Explore how the definition of crusade expanded during the 1200s to include wars fought in North Africa, within Western Europe itself, against Christian heretics, and even against political opponents. Why did crusading enthusiasm finally decline, and what legacies has it left?
Bianchini, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, is a historian of the Middle Ages and teaches extensively on the Crusades.
