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› Find signed collectible books: 'Arab Historians of the Crusades'
The recapture of Jerusalem, the siege of acre, the fall of Tripoli, the effect in Baghdad of events in Syria; these and other happenings were faithfully recorded by Arab historians during the two centuries of the Crusades. First published in English in 1969, this book presents 'the other side' of the Holy War, offering the first English translation of contemporary Arab accounts of the fighting between Muslim and Christian.
Extracts are drawn from seventeen different authors encompassing a multitude of sources:
Overall, this book gives a sweeping and stimulating view of the Crusades seen through Arab eyes.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Baudolino'
The most playful of historical novelists, Umberto Eco has absorbed the real lesson of history: that there is no such thing as the absolute truth. In Baudolino, he hands his narrative to an Italian peasant who has managed, through good luck and a clever tongue, to become the adopted son of the Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, and a minister of his court in the closing years of the 12th century. Baudolino's other gift is for spontaneous but convincing lies, and so his unfolding tale--as recounted in 1204 to a nobleman of Constantinople, while the fires of the Fourth Crusade rage around them--exemplifies the Cretan Liar's Paradox: He can't be believed. Why not, then, make his story as outrageous as possible? In the course of his picaresque tale, Baudolino manages to touch on nearly every major theme, conflict, and boondoggle of the Middle Ages: the Crusades; the troubadours; the legend of the Holy Grail; the rise of the cathedral cities; the position of Jews; the market in relics; the local rivalries that made Italy so vulnerable to outside attack; and the perennial power struggles between the pope and the emperor. With the help of alcohol and a mysterious Moorish concoction called "green honey," Baudolino and his ragtag friends engage in typical scholastic debates of the period, trying to determine the dimensions of Solomon's Temple and the location of the Earthly Paradise. And when the Emperor needs support in his claims for saintly lineage, who but Baudolino can craft the perfect letter of homage from the legendary Prester John, Holy (and wholly fictitious) Christian King of the East? A giddy and exasperating romp, Baudolino will draw you into its labyrinthine inventions and half-truths, even if you know better. --Regina Marler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chronicles of the Crusades'
A stunningly illustrated and accessible history of the Crusades from both sides of the war, from the 11th century to the 16th century, focuses on the eyewitness accounts of those who took part. Illustrations. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chronicles of the Crusades'
Unread/unmarked paperback shelved for decades with minimal wear to cover ships same or next day. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chronicles of the Crusades'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chronicles of the Crusades: Eye-Witness Accounts of the Wars Between Christianity and Islam'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chronicles of the Crusades: Nine Crusades and Two Hundred Years of Bitter Conflict for the Holly Land Brought to Life Through the Words of Those Who'
History of five years of conflict, with gorgeous color illustrations. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Concise History of the Crusades'

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cross and the Crescent: A History of the Crusades'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crusades'
The second edition of this standard introduction to the Crusades has been extensively rewritten to take account of the latest research and interpretations. Mayer covers all the expeditions which took place between the First Crusade in 1096 and the final retreat from Palestine in 1291, touching on a wide range of issues, from the impact of the Crusades on the history of participating states to the political entanglements it instigated between the Pope and emperors. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crusades: A History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crusades: A History'
A concise, clearly written synthesis . . . by one of the leading historians of the crusading movement. Robert S. Gottfried, Historian
A lively and flowing narrative [with] an enormous cast of characters that is not a mere catalog but a history. . . . A remarkable achievement.Thomas E. Morrissey, Church History
Superb.Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Speculum
A first-rate one-volume survey of the Crusading movement from 1074 . . . to 1798.Southwest Catholic
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crusades'
The Crusades, as Zoe Oldenbourg describes them, were not simply a religious phenomenon, nor were they motivated by pure aggression. They were the result of an emotional climate which led people from all walks of life - rich and poor, saints and sinners - to leave their homes and follow the unattainable ideal of a heavenly Jerusalem here on earth. Zoe Oldenbourg evokes the whole structure of feudal society and reveals the remarkable vitality and ingenuity of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, one of the more sophisticated achievements of the Middle Ages. Peopled with the great personalities behind the Crusades - Bohemond, Tancred, Peter the Hermit, Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crusades Iron Men And Saints'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crusades: The Illustrated History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crusades Through Arab Eyes'
European and Arab versions of the Crusades have little in common. For Arabs, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were years of strenuous efforts to repel a brutal and destructive invasion by barbarian hordes. In "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes", Amin Maalouf has sifted through the works of a score of contemporary Arab chroniclers of the Crusades, eyewitnesses and often participants in the events. He retells their stories in their own vivacious style, giving us a vivid portrait of a society rent by internal conflicts, and shaken by a traumatic encounter with an alien culture. He retraces two critical centuries of Middle Eastern history, and offers fascinating insights into some of the forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Crusades Through Arab Eyes'
The author has combed the works of contemporary Arab chronicles of the Crusades, eyewitnesses and often participants. He retells their story and offers insights into the historical forces that shape Arab and Islamic consciousness today. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crusading Warfare, 1097-1193'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Deus Lo Volt'
Thanks to the big screen, Evan Connell may be best known for Mr Bridge and Mrs Bridge, his-and-hers novels in which he recorded the tribulations of a Midwestern family. But Connell is no mere purveyor of WASPish minimalism. His greatest accomplishment to date is probably Son of the Morning Star, an account of Custer's foolish and fatal engagement at Little Big Horn, and Deus lo Volt! is cut from a similar historical cloth. This time, however, Connell has chosen a lengthier (and bloodier) conflict for his subject: Christendom's crusade against the Muslims.
Pope Urban set this so-called holy war in motion in 1095, when he urged a vast army to reclaim Jerusalem from those "Turks, Persians, Arabs, accursed, estranged from God, that have laid waste by fire and sword to the walls of Constantinople, to the Arm of Saint George." In no time at all, entire nations obliged him:
Does not a wheel turn slowly at first? Now faster, faster. Knights mortgaged their estates, great or small, farmers sold their plows, artisans their tools, each after his fashion preparing to liberate the Holy Land. Some who felt reluctant or undecided got unwelcome gifts to express contempt, a knitting needle, a distaff. Meanwhile the clerics of France distributed swords, staves, pilgrim wallets.Rallying to the cry of Deus lo volt! ("God wills it!"), these liberators threw themselves at the ramparts of Jerusalem for nearly 200 years. The sheer duration of the conflict would tax the skills of almost any traditional novelist, which probably explains why Connell has instead produced a quasi-medieval chronicle--one of those kitchen-sink creations in which mighty battles lie cheek by jowl with domestic anecdotes, historical background, character sketches, and an abundance of miracles. His prose echoes the language of the period without ever lapsing into Prince Valiant-style mannerism, and the result is a fascinating hybrid of scholarship and swordplay. At times the carnage defies belief: "Here were Angevins and Normans thrusting through eyes, through mouths, chopping off hands or feet, so many Turks dropping that pilgrims stumbled over heaps of bodies on the sand." Among other things, however, Deus lo Volt! is an astonishing episode in the history of ethnic cleansing, which makes it not only a medieval epic but a disturbingly modern one. --Bob Brandeis [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Discovery: Developing Views of the Earth from Ancient Times to Captain Cook'
Presents the development of man's various concepts of the earth and his place on it throughout history. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dream and the Tomb: A History of the Crusades'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dungeon Fire and Sword'
One of the most magnificent books... putting it down is almost impossible. Ocala Star-Banner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The First Crusade'
Whether the Crusades are regarded as the most romantic of Christian expeditions, or the last of the barbarian invasions, they remain one of the most exciting and colourful adventure stories in history. An army of mounted warriors, travelling with peasants, merchants and artisans, faced a journey over hostile terrain, meeting with unforeseen antagonism, desert heat, and the constant struggle to feed and water their troops and horses. Remittance from penance, a desire to see the Holy Places, or greed for the power and booty to be captured in the East spurred the crusaders on towards the prize, be it spiritual or temporal, of the Holy City of Jerusalem. Their journey's spectacular culmination was the long siege of Jerusalem, at the end of which the Crusaders, by a brilliant tactical manoeuvre, broke down its defences and poured into the city which erupted in a bloody massacre. Steven Runciman's History of the Crusades is justly acclaimed as the most complete and fascinating account of the historic journey to save the Holy Lands from the infidel. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The First Crusade: A New History'
On the last Tuesday of November 1095, Pope Urban II delivered an electrifying speech that launched the First Crusade. His words set Christendom afire. Some 100,000 men, from knights to paupers, took up the call--the largest mobilization of manpower since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Now, in The First Crusade, Thomas Asbridge offers a gripping account of a titanic three-year adventure filled with miraculous victories, greedy princes and barbarity on a vast scale. Readers follow the crusaders from their mobilization in Europe (where great waves of anti-Semitism resulted in the deaths of thousands of Jews), to their arrival in Constantinople, an exotic, opulent city--ten times the size of any city in Europe--that bedazzled the Europeans. Featured in vivid detail are the siege of Nicaea and the pivotal battle for Antioch, the single most important military engagement of the entire expedition, where the crusaders, in desperate straits, routed a larger and better-equipped Muslim army. Through all this, the crusaders were driven on by intense religious devotion, convinced that their struggle would earn them the reward of eternal paradise in Heaven. But when a hardened core finally reached Jerusalem in 1099 they unleashed an unholy wave of brutality, slaughtering thousands of Muslims--men, women, and children--all in the name of Christianity.
The First Crusade marked a watershed in relations between Islam and the West, a conflict that set these two world religions on a course toward deep-seated animosity and enduring enmity. The chilling reverberations of this earth-shattering clash still echo in the world today. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials'
The First Crusade received its name and shape late. To its contemporaries, the event was a journey and the men who took part in it pilgrims. Only later were those participants dubbed Crusaders"those signed with the Cross." In fact, many developments with regard to the First Crusade, like the bestowing of the cross and the elaboration of Crusaders' privileges, did not occur until the late twelfth century, almost one hundred years after the event itself.
In a greatly expanded second edition, Edward Peters brings together the primary texts that document eleventh-century reform ecclesiology, the appearance of new social groups and their attitudes, the institutional and literary evidence dealing with Holy War and pilgrimage, and, most important, the firsthand experiences by men who participated in the events of 1095-1099.
Peters supplements his previous work by including a considerable number of texts not available at the time of the original publication. The new material, which constitutes nearly one-third of the book, consists chiefly of materials from non-Christian sources, especially translations of documents written in Hebrew and Arabic. In addition, Peters has extensively revised and expanded the Introduction to address the most important issues of recent scholarship.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fourth Crusade And The Sack Of Constantinople'
In 1202, zealous western Christians gathered in Venice determined to liberate Jerusalem from the grip of Islam. But the crusaders never made it to the Holy Land. Steered forward by the shrewd Venetian doge, they descended instead on Constantinople, wreaking devastation so terrible and inflicting scars so deep that as recently as 2001 Pope John Paul II offered an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church.
The crusaders spared no one: They raped and massacred thousands, plundered churches, and torched the lavish city. A prostitute danced on the altar of the ravaged Hagia Sophia. And by 1204, barbarism masquerading as piety had shattered one of the great civilizations of history. Here, on the eight hundredth anniversary of the sack, is the extraordinary story of this epic catastrophe, told for the first time outside of academia by Jonathan Phillips, a leading expert on the crusades.
Knights and commoners, monastic chroniclers, courtly troubadours, survivors of the carnage, and even Pope Innocent III left vivid accounts detailing the events of those two fateful years. Using their remarkable letters, chronicles, and speeches, Phillips traces the way in which any region steeped in religious fanaticism, in this case Christian Europe, might succumb to holy war. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople'
On August 15, 1199, Pope Innocent III called for a renewed effort to deliver Jerusalem from the Infidel, but the Fourth Crusade had a very different outcome from the one he preached. Proceeding no further than Constantinople, the Crusaders sacked the capital of eastern Christendom and installed a Latin ruler on the throne of Byzantium. This revised and expanded edition of The Fourth Crusade gives fresh emphasis to events in Byzantium and the Byzantine response to the actions of the Crusaders. Included in this edition is a chapter on the sack of Constantinople and the election of its Latin emperor.
A History Book Club selection.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'God's War: A New History of the Crusades'
God's War offers a sweeping new vision of one of history's most astounding events: the Crusades.
From 1096 to 1500, European Christians fought to recreate the Middle East, Muslim Spain, and the pagan Baltic in the image of their God. The Crusades are perhaps both the most familiar and most misunderstood phenomena of the medieval world, and here Christopher Tyerman seeks to recreate, from the ground up, the centuries of violence committed as an act of religious devotion.
The result is a stunning reinterpretation of the Crusades, revealed as both bloody political acts and a manifestation of a growing Christian communal identity. Tyerman uncovers a system of belief bound by aggression, paranoia, and wishful thinking, and a culture founded on war as an expression of worship, social discipline, and Christian charity.
This astonishing historical narrative is imbued with figures that have become legends--Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, Philip Augustus. But Tyerman also delves beyond these leaders to examine the thousands and thousands of Christian men--from Knights Templars to mercenaries to peasants--who, in the name of their Savior, abandoned their homes to conquer distant and alien lands, as well as the countless people who defended their soil and eventually turned these invaders back. With bold analysis, Tyerman explicates the contradictory mix of genuine piety, military ferocity, and plain greed that motivated generations of Crusaders. He also offers unique insight into the maturation of a militant Christianity that defined Europe's identity and that has forever influenced the cyclical antagonisms between the Christian and Muslim worlds.
Drawing on all of the most recent scholarship, and told with great verve and authority, God's War is the definitive account of a fascinating and horrifying story that continues to haunt our contemporary world.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of the Crusades: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem'
Sir Steven Runciman's three volume A History of the Crusades, one of the great classics of English historical writing, is being reissued. This volume deals completely with the First Crusade and the foundation of the kingdom of Jerusalem. As Runciman says in his preface: 'Whether we regard the Crusades as the most tremendous and most romantic of Christian adventures, or as the last of the barbarian invasions, they form a central fact in medieval history. Before their inception the centre of our civilization was placed in Byzantium and in the lands of the Arab caliphate. Before they faded out the hegemony in civilization had passed to western Europe. Out of this transference modern history was born.' [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades'
Sir Steven Runciman's three volume A History of the Crusades, one of the great classics of English historical writing, is now being reissued. In this final volume, Runciman examines the revival of the Frankish kingdom at the time of the Third Crusade until its collapse a century later. The interwoven themes of the book include: Christiandom, the replacement of the cultured Ayubites by the less sympathetic Mameluks as leader of the Moslem world, and the coming of the Mongols. He includes a chapter on architecture and the arts, and an epilogue on the last manifestations of the Crusading spirit. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187'
Sir Steven Runciman's three volume A History of the Crusades, one of the great classics of English historical writing, is now being reissued. This volume describes the Frankish states of Outremer from the accession of King Baldwin I to the re-conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin. As Runciman says in his preface, 'The politics of the Moslem world in the early twelfth-century defy straightforward analysis, but they must be understood if we are to understand the establishment of the Crusader states and the later causes of the recovery of Islam ... The main theme in this volume is warfare ... I have followed the example of the old chroniclers, who knew their business; for war was the background to life in Outremer and the hazards of the battlefield often decided its destiny.' [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail'
Michael Baigent, Henry Lincoln, and Richard Leigh, authors of The Messianic Legacy, spent over 10 years on their own kind of quest for the Holy Grail, into the secretive history of early France. What they found, researched with the tenacity and attention to detail that befits any great quest, is a tangled and intricate story of politics and faith that reads like a mystery novel. It is the story of the Knights Templar, and a behind-the-scenes society called the Prieure de Sion, and its involvement in reinstating descendants of the Merovingian bloodline into political power. Why? The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail assert that their explorations into early history ultimately reveal that Jesus may not have died on the cross, but lived to marry and father children whose bloodline continues today. The authors' point here is not to compromise or to demean Jesus, but to offer another, more complete perspective of Jesus as God's incarnation in man. The power of this secret, which has been carefully guarded for hundreds of years, has sparked much controversy. For all the sensationalism and hoopla surrounding Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the alternate history that it outlines, the authors are careful to keep their perspective and sense of skepticism alive in its pages, explaining carefully and clearly how they came to draw such combustible conclusions. --Jodie Buller [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Holy War'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World'
A penetrating narrative history of the Crusades that reveals the ominous links and parallels between those medieval clashes and the violent rivalries of the Middle East today. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Iron Lance'
Most of Stephen Lawhead's popular historical fantasies are part of one or another of his sagas, trilogies, or cycles. For readers who enjoy big galloping yarns set in distant lands, and don't mind having their hands held by the author every step of the way, the first volume of his new Christian trilogy should hit the spot.
The framing device begins at the end of the nineteenth century, in Edinburgh, where Gordon Murray is about to be inducted into an ancient brotherhood whose secret rites involve a sacred relic: the iron lance of the title. The main narrative is set in eleventh century Orkney. When Pope Urban II calls for the retaking of Jerusalem from the infidel, the local lord, Ranulf, joins the Crusade with his elder sons, leaving behind young Murdo to oversee the family holdings. When the Church, through a nefarious scheme, confiscates the house and holdings, Murdo has no choice but to follow the Crusaders to the Holy Land and bring his father home to fix the whole mess.
Lawhead paints a vast and exotic canvas of medieval world politics, then peoples it with colorful characters--cunning Byzantine rulers, bluff Norman knights, gap-toothed, shaggy-brained Saxon peasants--who encounter visions and miracles, brutality and ambition, love and justice. At the end of the main narrative, Murdo gets what he wants but not in the ways expected. The framing narrative ends with hints that, as the world lurches towards a new millennium, Gordon Murray's Christian secret society is the world's only hope for survival, and the time nears for the brotherhood to reveal itself. --Luc Duplessis [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Knights Templar'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Knights Templar: The Essential History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders'
The Templars, the Hospitallers (later Knights of Malta), the Teutonic Knights and the Knights of the Spanish and Portugese orders were "noblemen vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience, living a monastic life in convents which were at the same time barracks, waging war on the enemies of the Cross." The first properly disciplined Western troops since Roman times, they played a major role in defending the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, in the "Baltic Crusades" which created Prussia, in the long reconquest of Spain from the Moors, and in fighting the "Infidel" right up to Napoleonic times. This celebrated book tells the whole enthralling story, recreating such epics as the sieges of Rhodes and Malta and the destruction of the Templars by the Inquisition. Acclaimed on publication, it has now been revised and updated, with a concluding chapter to take events into the 1990s.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades'
Nine hundred years ago, at a church council in Clermont, Pope Urban II delivered an impassioned sermon, calling upon Frankish knights to vow to march to the East to free Christians from the yoke of Islamic rule and to liberate the tomb of Christ, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, from Muslim control. Thus began the Crusades: the bloody and grueling battles pitched between European knights and the Islamic defenders over the course of two hundred years, movements that created the legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, military orders such as the Knights Templar, and an unusually rich tradition of art and architecture.
In The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, the story of the Crusades is told as never before in an engrossing, authoritative, and comprehensive history that ranges from the preaching of the First Crusade in 1095 to the legacy of the crusading ideals and imagery that continues today. Here are the ideas of apologists, propagandists, and poets about the Crusades, as well as the perceptions and motives of the crusaders themselves and the means by which they joined the movement--crusaders were required to "take the cross" (which involved making a vow, often at an emotional public gatherings under the influence of preachers whose business it was to whip their audiences up into a frenzy) and were foresworn to wear a cross on their clothing until they returned from their mission in the East. The authors describe the elaborate social and civic systems that arose to support the Crusades--taxation, for example, was formalized by the Church and monarchs to raise enormous funds needed to wage war on this scale; nearly 1,000,000 livres tournois were raised from the French church (out of estimated total expenses of some 3,000,000 livres) for Louis IX's first crusade in 1248. And here are vivid descriptions of the battles themselves, frightening, disorienting, and dangerous affairs, with keen and insightful commentary on the reactions of the Muslims to a Christian holy war. Extensively illustrated with hundreds of illustrations, maps, chronologies, and a guide to further reading, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades even includes coverage of crusades outside the eastern Mediterranean region and post-medieval crusades.
From descriptions of the battles and homefront conditions, to a throrough evaluation of the clash (and coalescence) of cultures, to the legacy of the crusading movement that continues into our conflict-torn twentieth-century, to the enduring artistic and social changes that the Crusades wrought, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades offers an unsurpassed panorama of one of the great movements in western history. This beautiful work will engage and inform anyone with an interest in the Crusades. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pagan's Crusade'
› Find signed collectible books: 'The People You Meet and the Books You Read'
First of an exciting new trilogy from the author of Byzantium, The Iron Lance is set at the time of the first Crusade in 1099. Amidst visions of the ancient past, a 19th century Scottish lawyer glimpses the harrowing pilgrimage of an ancestor...In the year 1095, Pope Urban II declares war on the infidel. Kings, princes, and lords throughout Europe take up the cross and rush to join the Crusade. Murdo Ranulfson is left behind to guard his family's interests in the remote Orkney Isles while his father and brothers join the fight to win Jerusalem. But when all the family's lands and possessions are confiscated, Murdo follows the Crusade with the hope of finding his father and redeeming their land. His epic journey leads him to the heart of the civilized world, where the Emperor Alexius and the Lords of the West are engaged in a battle of wills that threatens the survival of the Holy Roman Empire. Steeped in heroism, treachery and the clamour of battle, The Iron Lance begins an epic trilogy of a Scottish family fighting for its existence and its faith during the age of the Great Crusades. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)'
New Hardcover w/dust cover (as shown) "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and The Crusades)" minor shelf wear to jacket; in great condition. FAST shipping...(A3) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Templars: The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades'
The Knights Templar remain the most glamorous, but also the most mysterious, of all religious organizations. Romanticized by Walter Scott in his novel Ivanhoe and by Wagner in his opera Parsifal, the Templars have been both celebrated as ascetic martyrs, dying for the greater good of Christianity, and condemned as deviant heretics, thieves, and sodomites who sold the Holy Land out to the Muslim Infidels. In his carefully researched study The Templars, the acclaimed novelist Piers Paul Read investigates the truth behind the myth. Placing his account of the rise of the Templars within a wider historical and political context, Read argues that "The Templars were a multinational force engaged in the defence of the Christian concept of a world order: and their demise marks the point when the pursuit of the common good within Christendom became subordinate to the interests of the nation state."
This approach takes Read back into the Dark Ages and the context for the first Christian Crusade, which culminated in the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. In an attempt to hold on to Jerusalem and one of the holiest sites in Christendom, the Temple of Solomon, the Templars were formed as a strict religious-military order, committed to poverty, chastity, and the protection of pilgrims en route to the Holy Land. Read charts their rise to political and financial power and influence throughout Europe and the Holy Land, and their bloody (and ultimately unsuccessful) conflict with the forces of Islam over the subsequent two centuries. Read's account is painstakingly recounted, but often lacks the verve and pace demanded by the colorful cast of characters, including Saladin and Richard the Lionheart. The best sections of the book deal with the shockingly cynical destruction of the Order by Pope Clement V and King Philip the Fair in 1312, preceded by the torture and death of hundreds of Templars who had already fought bravely for the cross in the Holy Land. The Templars are fascinating, but in his attempt to avoid the more colorful and conspiratorial stories associated with the Order, Read's book may strike some as a little turgid, despite its admirable historical detail. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Templars: The Dramatic History of the Knights Templar, the Most Powerful Military Order of the Crusades'
The Knights Templar remain the most glamorous, but also the most mysterious, of all religious organizations. Romanticized by Walter Scott in his novel Ivanhoe and by Wagner in his opera Parsifal, the Templars have been both celebrated as ascetic martyrs, dying for the greater good of Christianity, and condemned as deviant heretics, thieves, and sodomites who sold the Holy Land out to the Muslim Infidels. In his carefully researched study The Templars, the acclaimed novelist Piers Paul Read investigates the truth behind the myth. Placing his account of the rise of the Templars within a wider historical and political context, Read argues that "The Templars were a multinational force engaged in the defence of the Christian concept of a world order: and their demise marks the point when the pursuit of the common good within Christendom became subordinate to the interests of the nation state."
This approach takes Read back into the Dark Ages and the context for the first Christian Crusade, which culminated in the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. In an attempt to hold on to Jerusalem and one of the holiest sites in Christendom, the Temple of Solomon, the Templars were formed as a strict religious-military order, committed to poverty, chastity, and the protection of pilgrims en route to the Holy Land. Read charts their rise to political and financial power and influence throughout Europe and the Holy Land, and their bloody (and ultimately unsuccessful) conflict with the forces of Islam over the subsequent two centuries. Read's account is painstakingly recounted, but often lacks the verve and pace demanded by the colorful cast of characters, including Saladin and Richard the Lionheart. The best sections of the book deal with the shockingly cynical destruction of the Order by Pope Clement V and King Philip the Fair in 1312, preceded by the torture and death of hundreds of Templars who had already fought bravely for the cross in the Holy Land. The Templars are fascinating, but in his attempt to avoid the more colorful and conspiratorial stories associated with the Order, Read's book may strike some as a little turgid, despite its admirable historical detail. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Warriors of God : Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade'
Throughout the medieval era, the Holy Land was a fiercely contested battlefield, fought over by huge Muslim and Christian armies, by zealots and assassins. The Third Crusade, spanning five years at the end of the 12th century, was, writes James Reston Jr. in this absorbing account, "Holy War at its most virulent," overseen by two great leaders, the Kurdish sultan Salah ad-Din, or Saladin, and the English king Richard, forevermore known as Lionheart.
Writing with a keen sense of historical detail and drama, Reston traces the complex path by which Saladin and Richard came to face each other on the field of battle. The Crusades, he observes, began "as a measure to redirect the energies of warring European barons from their bloody, local disputes into a 'noble' quest to reclaim the Holy Land from the 'infidel'." Of the five Crusades over 200 years, only the first was successful, to the extent that the Christian armies were able to conquer their objective of Jerusalem. The Third Crusade, as Reston ably shows, was complicated by fierce rivalries among the Christian leaders, by a chain of military disasters that led to the destruction of an invading German army and its emperor, and by the dedication of an opposing Islamic army that shared both a goal and a language.
Saladin, Reston writes, was a brilliant leader and a merciful victor, but capable of costly errors; Richard was extraordinarily skilled at combat, but his lack of resolve cost him many battles, and, ultimately, Jerusalem. Richard returned to Europe, Saladin to Damascus. Neither leader has long to live, and the peace they made would soon be broken. James Reston's splendid book does them both honor while examining a conflict that has never really ended. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Baudolino'
Umberto Eco regresa a la Edad Media con una fascinante historia donde se confunden y entremezclan hazañas prodigiosas e inverosímiles, propias de los libros de caballerías, con andanzas y viajes a países remotos y escenarios desconocidos, un vasto fresco narrativo en el que se conjugan elementos de la novela histórica con otros propios del relato de intriga, de aventuras o del género policíaco.
En una zona del bajo Piamonte donde, años después, surgirá Alejandría, Baudolino, un pequeño campesino, fantasioso y embustero, conquista a Federico Barbarroja y se convierte en su hijo adoptivo. Baudolino fabula e inventa, pero, casi milagrosamente, todo aquello que imagina genera Historia. Así, entre otras cosas, crea la mítica carta del Preste Juan, que prometía a Occidente un reino fabuloso, en el lejano Oriente, gobernado por un rey cristiano, una carta que ha nutrido la imaginación de muchos viajeros posteriores, entre los que se cuenta Marco Polo. Baudolino crece, nace Alejandría y, años más tarde, empujado por la invención de Baudolino, Federico emprende un viaje, con el pretexto de hacer una cruzada, para restituir al Preste Juan la más preciosa reliquia de la cristiandad, el Santo Grial. Federico morirá durante el viaje -en circunstancias misteriosas que sólo Baudolino nos revelará-, pero su ahijado continuará el viaje hacia aquel reino lejano, entre los monstruos que han habitado los bestiarios del medioevo, vicisitudes llenas de magia y hechizos durante las que vivirá un delicado episodio amoroso con la más singular de las hijas de Eva. Narrada a Nicetas Coniates, historiador bizantino, mientras Constantinopla arde saqueada por los cruzados, la historia nos reserva aún algunas sorpresas, puesto que, hablando con Nicetas, Baudolino comprende cosas que no había entendido todavía y de las que se deriva un final verdaderamente inesperado. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Las Cruzadas Vistas Por Los Arabes / Crusades Through Arab Eyes'
Basandose en los testimonios de los historiadores y cronistas arabes de la epoca, Amin Maalouf relata la historia de las cruzadas tal y como las vieron y vivieron en «el otro campo», es decir, en el lado musulman, un punto de vista hasta ahora olvidado. Las cruzadas vistas por los arabes abarca el periodo comprendido entre la llegada de los primeros cruzados a Tierra Santa en 1096 y la toma de Acre por el sultan Jalil en 1291, dos agitados siglos que dieron forma a Occidente y al mundo arabe y que aun hoy siguen condicionando sus relaciones. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Enigma Sagrado / Sacred Mystery'
The holy blood and the holy grail [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Enigma Sagrado/ the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Los Templarios / The Templars'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Baudolino'
In quella zona del basso Piemonte dove, anni dopo, sorgerà Alessandria, Baudolino, un piccolo contadino fantasioso e bugiardo, conquista Federico Barbarossa e ne diventa figlio adottivo. Baudolino affabula e inventa ma, quasi per miracolo, tutto quello che immagina produce Storia. Così, tra le altre cose, costruisce la mitica lettera del Prete Gianni, che prometteva all'Occidente un regno favoloso, nel lontano Oriente, governato da un re cristiano, che ha mosso la fantasia di molti viaggiatori successivi, compreso Marco Polo. Baudolino cresce, Alessandria nasce e, anni dopo, spinto dall'invenzione di Baudolino, Federico parte, col pretesto di una crociata, per andare a riconsegnare al Prete Gianni la più preziosa reliquia della cristianità. Morirà lungo il viaggio, in circostanze misteriose che solo Baudolino ci svela, ma il suo figlioccio continuerà il viaggio verso quel regno lontano, tra i mostri che hanno abitato i bestiari del Medio Evo, vicende mirabolanti, e una delicata vicenda d'amore con la più singolare fra tutte le figlie di Eva. Raccontata a Niceta Coniate, storico bizantino, mentre Costantinopoli brucia e i crociati la saccheggiano, la storia riserva ancora alcune sorprese perché, parlando con Niceta, Baudolino comprende cose che non aveva ancora capito, da cui un finale veramente inatteso. Avventura picaresca, romanzo storico in cui emergono in germe i problemi dell'Italia contemporanea, storia di un delitto impossibile, racconto fantastico, teatro di invenzioni linguistiche esilaranti, questo libro celebra la forza del mito e dell'utopia. [via]
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