Crusades
The book that accompanied Terry Jones and Alan Ereira’s 1995 BBC television series. It follows the Crusades from Pope Urban II’s call at Clermont in 1095 through the sack of Jerusalem, the Fourth Crusade’s destruction of Constantinople and the Albigensian campaign in southern France. It reads them as a business as much as a holy war, driven by indulgences, land, plunder and the interests of the men who financed them. Jones’s comic instinct is present throughout, but the account rests on the Arab and Byzantine sources as well as the Latin ones.
Recommended by 1 Person
Andy McNab
I watched that Terry Jones documentary about the crusades ages ago and it was quite funny. You’ve got old Pope Urban in the 11th century who got up and said: ‘We’ve got to go do it.’ And the spread of Christianity – it was all about business, power. And all of a sudden the crusaders were getting absolution. There was a crusade in the south of France and the Pope said: ‘Just kill them all. God will sort it out in Heaven.’
Interview · May 2010
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