The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War - Reviews - Book Review

Contemporary Review, July, 2003

The Crusades: A History of Armed Pilgrimage and Holy War. Geoffrey Hindley. Constable. [pounds sterling]18.99. 300 pages. ISBN 1-84119-597-9. When, in the days following September 11th, politicians in the U.S. and U.K. first used the term, 'crusade against terrorism', they were quickly shouted down by the politically correct censors.

'Crusade', they were told, was a bad word, meaning religious bigotry and murderous zeal enacted between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries against the peaceful Mohammedan world in the Holy Land. Modem historians, born into 'multiracial' countries, can likewise find little to say in defence of the Crusades. It has been difficult for readers to get hold of a balanced, impartial but not uncritical study of the Crusades. This book solves the problem. The author does not claim to have done original research but to have given readers a survey of a very complicated period. He begins with the call for the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095 and ends with the Battle of Nicopolis in 1 396. He also has an interesting, final chapter on 'the decline of a flawed ideal' and shows how the legacy of the 'crusades' has continued to influence Western man to the present time, as well as to serve as an excuse for Mohammedan terrorists. The Crusades, he concludes, 'had moments of true glory and gestures of hypocrisy'. They were, above all, 'inspired by that confusion of motives and ideals which tends to be inherent in the human condition'. (R.G.S.)