The Papacy and the Crusades

Interest in, and frequent misunderstanding of, the Crusades, remains high today, as I have noted before. The same could be equally said of the papacy. Ashgate has a new book that brings both together: Michel Belard, ed., La Papauté et les croisades / The Papacy and the Crusades (Ashgate, 310pp.). 


This book brings together the acts of the seventh Congress of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East that was held in Avignon in August 2008.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

This volume brings together a selection of the papers on the theme of the Papacy and the Crusades, delivered at the 7th Congress of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. After the introduction by Michel Balard, the first papers examine aspects of crusader terminology. The next section deals with events and perceptions in the West, including papers on the crusades against the Albigensians and Frederick II, and on the situation in the Iberian peninsula. There follow studies on relations between crusaders and the local populations in the Byzantine world after 1204 and Frankish Greece, and in Cilician Armenia, while a final pair looks at papal interventions in Poland and Scandinavia.

The publisher also helpfully provides a table of contents:

• Contents: Introduction, Michel Balard; Part I Les Mots: Nouveau mot ou nouvelle réalité? Le terme cruciata et son utilisation dans les textes poniticaux, Benjamin Weber; Le varie ragioni per 'assumere la croce'. Il senso di un arruolamento in più direzioni, Giulio Cipollone; The French recent historiography of the Holy War, Michel Balard. Part II L'Occident: Louis VII, Innocent II et la seconde Croisade, Monique Amouroux; Smoking sword: le meurtre du légat Pierre de Castelnau et la première Croisade albigeoise, Marco Meschini; Casting out demons by Beelzebub: did the Papacy preaching against the Albigensians ruin the Crusades? Karl Borchardt; The papal 'crusade' against Frederick II in 1228–1230, Graham A. Loud; When ideology met reality: Clement V and the Crusade, Sophia Menache; 1308 and 1177: Venice and the Papacy in real and imaginary crusade, David M. Perry; Papal claims to authority over lands gained from the Infidel: the Iberian peninsula and beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, Alan Forey; The papacy and the crusade in XVth century Portugal, Luis Adao da Fonseca, Maria Cristina Pimenta and Paula Pinto Costa. Part III L'Orient: The papacy and the 4th Crusade in the correspondence of the Nicean emperors with the popes, Aphrodite Papayianni; A vacuum of leadership: 1291 revisited, James M. Powell; Crusading in a nearer East: the Balkan politics of Honorius III and Gregory IX (1221–1241), Francesco Dall'Aglio; La politique de soutien pontifical aux lignages nobiliaires Moréotes aux XIIIe et XIVe Siècles, Isabelle Ortega; La Papauté et les Hospitaliers de Rhodes aux lendemains de la chute de Constantinople (1453–1467), Pierre Bonneaud; Papauté, Latins d'Orient et croisés sous le regard de l'archevêque de Tarse, Nersês Lambronatsi, Isabelle Augé; Le rôle de la papauté dans la politique arménienne des Hospitaliers au XIVe siècle, Marie-Anna Chevalier. Part IV L'Europe du Nord et de L'Est: Poland and the papacy before the 2nd Crusade, Darius von Güttner Sporzynski; Politics and crusade: Scandinavia, the Avignon papacy and the crusade in the XIVth century, Janus Moller Jensen; Index.