15 June 2004

Crusade

Everyone's reading about Islam these days. I'm finishing up Eco's novel Baudolino, and our hero has headed off to one of the Crusades. Apparently, there were a lot of them.

I accidentally doubled-up on the links above: both pointed to Amazon. I fixed the Crusades link to point to Wikipedia.

The Crusades lasted roughly from 1095 to 1272. Here's an abbreviated synopsis from the Wikipedia article:

  1. First Crusade - 1095 Pope Urban II calls for a Crusade, 1099 crusaders take Jerusalem,
  2. Second Crusade - Bernard of Clairvaux calls to retake Edessa in northern Mesopotamia, 1147 to 1149 France and Germany fail and return home,
  3. Third Crusade - 1187 Saladin captures Jerusalem, Pope Gregory VIII calls for a crusade, 1192 truce (Baudolino's here!),
  4. Fourth Crusade - 1202 Pope Innocent III, 1204 Constantinople sacked (remaining crusades were efforts of the papacy in its struggle against the secular power, to divert the military energies of the European nations toward Syria),
  5. Albigensian Crusade - 1209 eliminate the heretical Cathars of southern France,
  6. Children's Crusade - 1212 pilgrimage of children eventually sold into slavery,
  7. Fifth Crusade - 1215 Fourth Lateran Council calls for a crusade on foot, 1219 they take Damietta in Egypt but must eventually surrender in Cairo,
  8. Sixth Crusade - 1228 Emperor Frederick II takes Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem,
  9. Seventh Crusade - 1243 Pope's Templars in Egypt, 1248 to 1254 Louis IX of France unsuccessful,
  10. Eighth Crusade - 1270 Louis IX of France unsuccessful in Tunis in Tunisia,
  11. Ninth Crusade - 1271 to 1272 Edward I of England ends in truce, end of Christian occupation of Syria
[ posted by sstrader on 15 June 2004 at 11:43:53 PM in Culture & Society ]