Documents on the later Crusades, 1274-1580
By: edited and translated by Norman Housley.
Contributors: Housley, Norman.
Series: Documents in history series
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 204
Subjects: Crusades -- Sources.
Description: In this book Norman Housley, the leading British specialist on the later crusades, has brought together and translated 62 texts which illustrate the key themes and developments within the movement between the collapse of the crusader states in the Holy Land and the age of the Counter-Reformation.

The documents have been carefully selected to provide a commentary on three aspects in particular of the later crusades. First, the extraordinary range and variety of the crusading experience are communicated through texts which relate to military activity in the eastern Mediterranean, Iberia and North Africa, the Baltic region, and a number of countries within the heart of Catholic Europe.

Secondly, the 'nuts and bolts' of crusading are examined in the shape of the resources whose mobilisation made crusading possible, and the mechanisms used to harness them. Thirdly, the broad spectrum of contemporary responses to the crusading ideal is explored. The most important of these were enthusiastic acceptance, condemnatory rejection, and the assimilation of crusading zeal into expressions of national feeling.

In his Introduction, Norman Housley demonstrates how the texts he has chosen cast light on these aspects of the later crusades.
Notes: Documents originally in Old French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Includes bibliographical references and index.