Crusades [Hardcover]

Terry Jones (Author), Alan Ereira (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

In 1095, Pope Urban II called upon Christians to march under the banner of the Cross and save their brothers in the East from the advance of Islam. This vision of crusading Christianity dominated the events of the next two centuries and brought together people of all ages and backgrounds, sworn to spread Christianity and wrest the Holy Land from the Infidel. First published to accompany the acclaimed BBC television series, "Crusades" tells the compelling, often horrific, story of the fanatics and fantasists, knights and peasants who were caught up in these fervent times. It reveals how Muslims, Jews and Christians were massacred, and how the Crusades sowed the seeds of 'jihad', the holy war for Islam, a legacy that endures today.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Jones, the author of collections of children's fairy tales and a producer of films in the Monty Python series, and Ereira, a BBC executive, produced this book to accompany a forthcoming TV series on crusades. Splendidly illustrated, cleverly and wittily written, the book is likely to do a great deal of damage. It is rife with errors of fact, anachronisms, and vulgarisms. Worse, it is pervaded with a vicious, if politically correct, anti-Catholic bigotry, suggesting that the authors know very little medieval history (although a bibliography does list some of the standard reference works on the crusades). With no reference to Muslim Spain, generally acknowledged as the source of the crusading idea; with no concept of the social or cultural implications (what of women, mathematics, medicine, diet, etc.?); without even a definition of the term crusade, the authors explain the various movements solely as sporadic events linked by religious fanaticism. Westerners today pay a heavy price for their ignorance of the Middle East and their imperialistic exploitation of that region. The general public to whom the book is directed deserves better than they get here.
Bennett D. Hill, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

TERRY JONES is most famous as a member of Monty Python. He has directed several feature films including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Life of Brian, and The Meaning of Life. He is the author of several children's books and of two books on medieval England: Chaucer's Knight and the highly acclaimed Who Murdered Chaucer? He has been praised as "a natural story-teller, inventive and mesmerising". ALAN ALEIRA was co-producer on the BBC's Crusades series. He has worked as a BBC radio and television producer, specialising in history since 1962. His credits include Battle of the Somme (Japan Prize 1978) and Armada (Royal Television Society Best Documentary Series, 1988). He is the author of The People's England, The Invergordon Mutiny and The Heart of the World. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Checkmark Books (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816032750
• ISBN-13: 978-0816032754
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,592,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

167 of 185 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Politically correct, funny, and informative., September 1, 2001

By 

Sergio Flores (Orange, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crusades [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This documentary is so funny, it is almost cruel. After all, the Crusades were very serious affairs (God, country, heathens, invasions, and so on), so what is Terry Jones of "Monty Python" fame doing here, leading the new barbarians of the West in a Quest for the Greater Glory of God and a little bit of plunder? Well, he, and the whole BBC-A&E production team, are taking us to a journey Eastward, retracing the steps of the medieval pilgrim-soldiers, ignorant peasants and nobles alike who invaded Levant because they were religious zealots, greedy, and unscrupulous. Does this sound a bit one-sided? It is, and that is the only problem with this very entertaining and educational documentary: in their attempt to be fair to the Arab/Moslem side, the producers have ended up taking sides, which is not very susprising since the historical bulk comes from the late Sir Steven Runciman, one of the most respected and most widely read historians of the Crusades, whose bias against the "Franks" and for the Byzantines, is evident once one reads his great "History of the Crusades." Jonathan Riley-Smith attempts to balance the story with his commentaries, and it is no secret that his sympathies are with the Crusaders, but the program is structured in such a way that not even Riley-Smith's input saves it from being tilted. Terry Jones is simply outstanding with his British (Welsh) accent and deadpan humor as the perfect guide in this tour.
The Crusades were far more complicated than the simplistic Bad Guys (ignorant Europeans/Christians) against the Good Guys (enlightened Arabs/Moslems) picture would make us believe. Historical perspective helps us see the Crusades as a chapter in the (sometimes quite deadly) embrace of two world religions. Long periods of peace are punctuated by terrible periods of war and invasion. The Moslems got the ball rolling when they invaded the Christian lands of North Africa, Spain, and the Bizantine Empire. It took a while for the Christians to counterattack (just as it took a --shorter-- while for the Moslems to react to the Crusaders). When the Christians finally went on the offensive, their timing was not the best, and their choice of tactics was very questionable. Christendom was extremely intolerant back then, so everybody who was not a Christian, and many who were the "wrong" kind of Christian, were immediately suspect and dealt with mercilessly. What the program fails to mention is that Europe always had voices of dissent, and not all Crusaders were murdering barbarians, as not all Popes were conniving greedy zealots. The program also fails to provide the true historical setting of the Crusades: after the Crusaders were defeated, the Moslem world advanced into Europe from the East and South, and it remained in Western Europe (Iberian Peninsula) until the late 15th century. It was not until the late 17th century that the Ottoman Turks retreated from the siege of Vienna. The Crusades were a chapter in this stormy relationship of European Christianity and Islam. The producers of the documentary would have served their viewers better by being less politically correct. The slef-flagellation is appropiate and even funny in the hands of Terry Jones, but sometimes too much of a good thing is just too much.
Still, "Crusades" is an excellent program, mostly because I am sure it will interest people who otherwise would have never bothered with medieval history or the Crusades in particular. This documentary is the perfect place to start a healthy interest in history. I also recommend (in book format) Steven Runciman's "History of the Crusades" 3 volumes (try to get the Folio Society Edition: the prints are in color and the binding is superb); "The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades," and "The Atlas of the Crusades," both edited by Riley-Smith; "The Cross and the Crescent," by Malcolm Billings; "The Dream and the Tomb," by Robert Payne; "The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe," edited by George Holmes; and "The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages," edited by Norman F. Cantor. For an interesting thesis that I find flawed, check Karen Armstrong's "Holy War." For a magnificent history of Islam, nothing better than "Islam: Art and Architecture," edited by Hattstein and Delius. And anything written by Professor Bernard Lewis on Islam, the Arabs, the Turks, the Jews, or the Middle East in general, is uniformly good.

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Narrowly focused but still pretty good, February 24, 2003

By 

Center Man "[e-mail]" (Norwich, CT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crusades (DVD)

"Crusades" does the basics well, better than most other television programs, while garnishing the outline with little, fascinating details. Still, you'll have to go to the library for a wider perspective. For starters, this series is top heavy; the first two episodes cover the First Crusade, the third races through the Second Crusade to get to Richard and Saladin, and the final episode concerns itself mainly with the Fourth Crusade, leaving the final 100 years of the Kingdom Acre 15-20 minutes of time.

Jones approaches his subject from what might be called a neo-European perspective, looking at the era mostly as two centuries of western interference in the Middle East. That's not necessarily a bad thing: in fact, it's perfect when Jones details Crusader horrors, giving them an immediate, in-our-streets quality. But the approach loses its footing when Jones explains the ambitions, the background and the people of the wars.

This leads to a few minor but irritating lapses. Jones sees the pope's political ambition as the sole spark of the First Crusade; you'd never know Christians and Muslims had fought each other in Spain for nearly 400 years by 1095. A statement by Saladin that his people had always been in possession of Palestine goes unchallenged (it's not like Jews lived there for 5,000 years or anything).

The biggest sins are errors of ommission. There's virtually nothing about the internal government of the Crusader states, the feudalization of Palestine or the fact they actually got along with their Muslim neighbors when their French and German brethren weren't leading cavalry charges across the sands. Worse, the Byzantine Empire is used solely to bookend the first and fourth crusades. The Emperor Manuel breathed new life into the Kingdom Jerusalem with his diplomacy and warfare in the 1160s, and hastened its collapse with his overreach in the 1170s. None of this warrants comment.

That's ultimately the weakness of this series -- the history mostly serves Jones' hypothesis that Christian extremism created Muslim extremism, a reasonable if simplistic conclusion from the era. It's more a failing of the medium, though; 200 minutes isn't nearly enough time for a subject like this. A thorough exploration would require a multi-hour, Ken Burns timeframe. But "Crusades" is visually inventive, and Jones is a cheerful and well-informed host who smartly uses the landscape and architecture of the Middle East to make his points. As a primer, it works.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant introduction to the subject, December 24, 2005

By 

T. Nielsen Hayden (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crusades (DVD)

Terry Jones starts this four-part documentary series by talking about the historical event that first sparked his interest in the Crusades: the 1098 massacre and cannibalization of the inhabitants of the small town of Ma'arrat al-Numan, during the First Crusade. How was it, he asked, that medieval Europeans had come so far, and been brought to such a pass? What, exactly, had gone on there?

It's a good starting point. Anyone who takes it to mean that the whole series is about nothing but the awfulness of the Crusaders is just being stupid.

I can't imagine a better general introduction to the Crusades than this series. Jones discusses the social background, diverse interests, and triggering events that first set the Crusaders' feet on the road to the Holy Land. He doesn't stop there. His handling of his material is simultaneously lighthanded, judicious, and intelligent.

What this series isn't:

1. A comedy routine. Not that it isn't funny whenever there's occasion to be; but that's not the main point of it.

2. A complete history of the Crusades. It couldn't be. Nor is it meant to be. If Terry Jones had tried to squeeze the whole history of the Crusades into four episodes, the series would have been unwatchable, and he still wouldn't have gotten everything in.

3. An "Us versus Them" vindication of Westerners, Christians, and Crusaders, as opposed to all those wicked Middle Easterners, Muslims, and other Sneaky Mediterraneans. Frankly, it's embarrassing how many reviewers here are outraged at what they perceive as Jones's failure to condemn the entire Medieval Islamic world.

Some of the series' strong points:

1. The role of unintended consequences. No one had any idea what they were starting. As Jones repeatedly demonstrates, many crucial actions were undertaken by people who had no clear overall picture of what was going on, and consequently had no way to judge the effects they'd have.

2. The varying motivations of the Crusaders of different social classes at different times.

3. The way the crusading impulse, and responses to it, changed over time.

4. The everyday realities of Crusader life.

That last is one of Terry Jones' continuing interests. You can see it in his other historical documentaries as well. He's always asking what life was like for the ordinary people, and how it was like and unlike our own lives. In this series, it leads him to do things like don chain mail and trek across an Anatolian hillside, test the proposition that anyone who tried to wade ashore at Acre while wearing armor would necessarily drown, and investigate the role of washerwomen.

The three best things about these documentaries:

1. They're always clear and never dull.

2. When you finish watching them, you may not know absolutely everything about the Crusades, but nothing you've learned will be wrong.

3. You're likely to come out of it thinking the Crusades are interesting, and want to learn more about them.