San Antonio College Library

"The Crusades were a centuries-long series of military campaigns in a violent struggle between the Christian and Islamic worlds. Such wars were fought not only against Islamic empires in Asia Minor, the Holy Land and throughout the Mediterranean region, but also within Europe against heretics, pagans, and opponents of the Church. Crusades traces these major expeditions and focuses on key episodes such as the titanic struggles over Jerusalem and Constantinople....

In 1996 the world commemorates the 900th anniversary of the First Crusade or, more precisely, of the pogroms unleashed by the crusade upon the Jews of the Rhineland. In the Year 1096 ... presents a clear, highly readable chronicle of the events of 1096. Noted teacher and historian Robert Chazan brings readers to critical moments in Jewish history, illuminating the events themselves, their antecedents, and their far-reaching consequences. Equally important,...

In The Crusades and the Christian World of the East, Christopher MacEvitt marshals an impressive array of literary, legal, artistic, and archeological evidence to demonstrate how crusader ideology and religious difference gave rise to a mode of coexistence he calls "rough tolerance." The twelfth-century Frankish rulers of the Levant and their Christian subjects were separated by language, religious practices, and beliefs. Yet western Christians showed...

The triumph of the First Crusade (1095-1099) led to the establishment of a Latin Christian community in the Levant. Remarkably, despite growing pressure from the neighbouring Muslim powers, and the failure of the Second Crusade (1145-49), the settlers were able to occupy Jerusalem and substantial areas of what are now Israel, Syria and the Lebanon for over three-quarters of a century. It was the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 which precipitated...

"Women, like men, joined the religious military orders that came about during the Crusades such as the Templars, Hospitallers, and Order of Santiago. This study looks deeper into female membership of these orders by placing the discussion of women in medieval military orders in the larger context of female monasticism. While all major religious military orders are taken into account, the focus of this study, and the brunt of new research, is on the...