Week 1 (October 1): Introduction

Recommendations for Background Readings:

Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Crusade, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Princeton UP: 1994)

Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, v.1-2, (UChicago: 1977)

Week 2 (October 8): The Medieval Mediterranean World: Orientations and Conceptualizations in Global History

Suggested Readings:

David Abulafia, "Introduction: What is the Mediterranean?; John Pryor, "The Mediterranean breaks up: 500-1000"; and Michel Balard, "A Christian Mediterranean: 1000-1500," The Mediterranean in History, ed. D. Abulafia (Thamses & Hudson: Los Angeles, 2003), p. 11-26, 155-181, 183-217

Dominique Valerian, "The Medieval Mediterranean, " A Companion to Mediterranean History, ed. P. Horden and S. Kinoshita (Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 2014), p. 77-90

Adnan A. Husain, "Introduction: Approaching Islam and the Religious Cultures of the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean," A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean, 1200-1700), ed. A.A. Husain and K.E. Fleming (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007), p. 1-26

Simon Lloyd, "The Crusading Movement, 1096-1274," Oxford History of the Crusades (Oxford UP: 1999), p. 35-67

Week 3 (October 15): A Persecuting Society? Narratives of European Divergence

Suggested Readings:

R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (Blackwell: 2007, originally 1987)

David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton UP: 1996)

R.I. Moore, "The Transformation of Europe as a Eurasian Phenomenon," Medieval Encounters, 10/1 (2004), p. 74-98

Primary Sources:

“Guibert of Nogent and the Heretics at Soissons,”

“St. Augustine on the Grounds for Religious Persecution,”

“A Canon of the Fourth Lateran Council on Heresy,”

“The Inquisitor Bernardo Gui at Work,”

“Heretical Tricks: Nicholas Eymerich on the Art of Interrogation,” in The Intolerant Middle Ages: a Reader, ed. E. Smyelansky (Univ. of Toronto Press: 2020)

Week 4 (October 22): Holy Wars-Religion and Violence in the Mediterranean and Latin West

Suggested Readings:

Tomaz Mastnak, Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order (Univ. of California: 2002), p. 1-90 

Christopher Tyerman, “Violence and Holy War in Western Christendom,” The Routledge History of Medieval Christianity, 1050-1500, ed. R.N. Swanson (Routledge: 2015), p. 185-196

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh and Ridwan al-Sayyid, “The idea of jihad in Islam before the Crusades,’ in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (Dumbarton Oaks: 2001), p. 23-29. Internet Archive via link: https://archive.org/details/laiou-mottahedeh-the-crusades-from-the-perspective-of-byzantium-and-the-muslim-world/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater

Athina Kolia-Dermitzaki, “‘Holy War’ in Byzantium twenty years later: a question of term definition and interpretation” in Johannes Koder and Ioannis Stouraitis, eds., Byzantine War Ideology between Roman Imperial Concept and Christian Religion (Vienna 2012) 121-132

"Jonathan Riley-Smith, “Crusading as an act of Love,” History (1980), p. 177-192 

Jay Rubenstein, “Cannibals and Crusaders,” French Historical Studies v. 31/4 (2008), p. 525-552 

Primary Sources:

"Augustine of Hippo on the Just War," "Urban's Call for a Crusade," and "Bernard of Clairvaux: In Praise of the New Knighthood", in The Crusades: A Reader, ed. E. Amt and S.J. Allen (Univ of Toronto: 2014) 

"The Muslim Reaction," Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: A Reader, ed. Jarbel Rodriguez (Univ. of Toronto Press: 2020)

`Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami's Book of the Jihad" and "Memoirs of `Usamah ibn Munqidh" in Crusades: A Reader

Week 5 (October 29): Crusade and Latin Christendom

Tomaz Mastnak, Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and western Political Order (Univ. of California: 2002), p. 91-152; 279-348

David Nirenberg, "Christendom and Islam," Cambridge History of Christianity, v. 4: Christianity in Western Europe, c. 1100-1500, ed. M. Rubi and W. Simons (Cambridge University Press: 2009), p. 149-169

Amy G. Remensnyder, "The boundaries of Christendom and Islam: Iberia and the Latin Levant," The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity, ed. John H. Arnold (Oxford UP: Oxford, 2014) p. 93-113

Primary Sources

"Coexistence and Exclusion in the Siete Partidas," and "Pope Innocent III Forbids Venetian Merchants to Trade with the Muslim," The Intolerant Middle Ages: A Reader

"Letters on the Fall of Jerusalem" and "Taxation and Regulations for the Third Crusade," The Crusades: A Reader

Week 6 (November 5): Enemies of Christ--Jews and Crusade Massacres

Anna Sapir Abulafia, "Jewish Experience of the Crusades," Chp 7 in Christian-Jewish Relations, 1000-1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom (Pearson: 2011), p. 135-166

Jeremy Cohen, "Christian Theology and Anti-Jewish Violence in the Middle Ages: Connections and Disjunctions," and

Mark Cohen, "Anti-Jewish Violence and the Place of the Jews in Christendom and in Islam: a Paradigm," Religious Violence between Christians and Jews: Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives, ed. A.S. Abulafia (Palgrave Macmillan: 2002), p. 44-60, 107-137

Primary Sources

"Albert of Aachen on the Peasants' Crusade," and "Solomon bar Simson on the Massacres of Jews," in The Crusades: A Reader, p. 42-51

Week 7 (December 10): Enemies of Christ--Muslims as Ethno-Racial and Religious Others

John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (Columbia Univ Press: 2002), p. 105-169.

Geraldine Heng, “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages,” and “The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages II: Locations of Medieval Race,” Literature Compass, v. 8/5 (2011)

Primary Sources

Accounts of the conquest of Jerusalem, Internet Sourcebook:

Raymond d’Aguiliers: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/cde-jlem.asp#raymond3

Fulcher of Chartres (chps 27-28), “The Frankish Victory,”: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/cde-jlem.asp#fulcher1

"St. Francis Preaches to the Sultan of Egypt," “A Christian View of Islam,” “Burchard of Mount Sion on the Peoples of the East,” and “Bohemond and the Turkish Princess,” in Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: a Reader, ed. J. Rodriguez (Univ of Toronto Press: 2020), #50, p. 246-8; #60 and 61, p. 299-307; and #84, p. 409-18.

Week 8 (January 7/14) : Crusade in Literary Culture w/Dr. Margaret Pappano

Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades, ed. Anthony Bale (Cambridge: CUP, 2018)

Michael Routledge, "Songs," Oxford History of the Crusades (Oxford: OUP, 1999), p. 90-110.

Primary Texts

"The Song of Roland," and "Crusading Songs," in Crusades: A Reader

The King of Tars: https://sourcebook.stanford.edu/sites/all/modules/custom/vm/VersioningMachine/texts/King_Tars_0.html

Chaucer, "The Man of Law's Tale," The Canterbury Tales: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/man-laws-introduction-prologue-tale-and-epilogue

Week 9 (January 21):

Christoph Maier, “The Role of Women in the Crusade Movement: a Survey,” Journal of Medieval History, v. 30 (2004), p. 61-82

Sarah Davis-Secord, "In Battle and In Bed: Wanton Women and Women Warriors in Muslim and Christian Crusade Narratives," Gender and History (2021), p. 1-17

Peggy McCracken, "Scandalizing Desire: Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Chroniclers," Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady (Palgrave: 2003), p. 247-63

Helen Nicholson, “Women in the Third Crusade,” Journal of Medieval History, v. 23/4 (1997), p. 335-349

Adnan A. Husain and Margaret Aziza Pappano, “The One-Kingdom Solution?: Diplomacy, Marriage and Sovereignty in the Third Crusade,” Cosmopolitanism in the Middle Ages, ed. J.M. Ganim and S.A. Legassie (Palgrave Macmillan: 2013), p. 121-140 [OnQ]

Primary Sources

"Thomas of Froidmont: the Adventures of Margaret of Beverley, a Woman Crusader," and "Accounts of the Children's Crusade," Crusades: A Reader, #55 and #61, p.203-8, 241-44.

See also "Crusader's Disposition of Property, 1309," p. 190 in Crusades: A Reader