• Roman Catholicism

  / The Crusades
• Children’s Crusade

  / Controversies
• Torquato Tasso

  / Early life and works.
• Christianity

  / The role of imminent expectation in missions and emigrations
• pilgrimage

  / Meaning and motivations of pilgrimage
• Embriaci Family
• Peter the Venerable
• Jerusalem cross

• Albert of Aix
• indulgence
• Council of Clermont
• Alexius I Comnenus

• Suger

• al-Malik al-Kāmil
• Italy

  / Relations to the papacy
• John

• Gregory IX
• Frederick II

  / Years as a Crusader

• Baybars I
• Louis IX

  / Leadership of the Seventh Crusade
• France

  / Foreign relations

• Artuqid Dynasty
• Islamic world

  / The call for the Crusades
• St. James

• chivalry
• diplomacy

  / Venice
• Eastern Orthodoxy

  / The Crusades
• hospital

  / History of hospitals
• knight
• Western architecture

  / Norman Italy and Sicily

• Pius II

  / Pontificate

• Jerusalem

  / Early Islamic and Crusader periods
• Lebanon

  / Lebanon in the Middle Ages
• Palestine

  / The Crusades of Palestine
• Syria

  / From the 9th to the 12th century
• Venice

  / Relations with the Byzantine Empire

General works

A good bibliographic introduction to work on the Crusades, including sources, secondary studies, and journal articles, is found in H.E. Mayer and Joyce McLellan, “Select Bibliography of the Crusades,” in Kenneth M. Setton (ed.), A History of the Crusades, vol. 6 (1989), pp. 511–664. The best full-scale treatments of the Crusades in English are Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 vol. (1951–54); Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (1987); H.E. Mayer, The Crusades, 2nd ed. (1988); Jean Richard, The Crusades (1999); and Thomas F. Madden, A Concise History of the Crusades (1999). The long-neglected Muslim side of the story is examined by Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (2000). A multivolume collection, Kenneth M. Setton (ed.), A History of the Crusades, 2nd ed. (1969–89), is a cooperative work by a number of historians on a host of topics.

Useful selections of sources in English translation are James A. Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary Survey (1962); Francesco Gabrieli (compiler), Arab Historians of the Crusades (1969, reissued 1992; originally published in Italian, 1957); Régine Pernoud, The Crusades (1962; originally published in French, 1960); and Louise Riley-Smith and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (1981).

Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries

The idea of Crusade is explored in Carl Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade (1977; originally published in German, 1935), a classic in the history of the Crusades. Interpretations and factors are discussed in Paul Alphandéry, La Chrétienté et l’idée de croisade, 2 vol. (1954–59); James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (1969); and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986).

The best works on the First Crusade are Riley-Smith’s work cited above, as well as his The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (1997). Studies that illuminate other factors in the Crusade are John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (1994); and Marcus Bull, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade (1993). The attacks on the Jews during the First Crusade are discussed in Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (1987, reissued 1996), and In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews (1996). A useful treatment of the Third Crusade can be found in John Gillingham, Richard I (1999).

Crusader states

There are many excellent studies on the history of the Crusader states. Among these are Dana C. Munro, The Kingdom of the Crusaders (1935, reprinted 1966); John L. LaMonte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1100 to 1291 (1932, reprinted 1970); Jean Richard, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 2 vol. (1979; originally published in French, 1953); Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (1973); Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1096–1204 (1993); Jonathan Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land: Relations Between the Latin East and the West, 1119-1187 (1996); Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1998); and Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and His Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (2000).

Crusades in the 13th century

The Fourth Crusade is described by Donald E. Queller and Thomas F. Madden, The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd ed. (1997); and, from the Byzantine perspective, in Charles M. Brand, Byzantium Confronts the West, 1180–04 (1968). The Fifth Crusade is discussed in James M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (1986); and the older but still useful Joseph P. Donovan, Pelagius and the Fifth Crusade (1950). The best treatment of the Crusades of St. Louis can be found in Jean Richard, Saint Louis: Crusader King of France (1992). William Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade (1979), places the two Crusades within the framework of Louis’s reign.

Later Crusades

The single best resource for the later Crusades is Kenneth M. Setton’s magisterial The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), 4 vol. (1976–84). Also important are Norman Housley, The Avignon Papacy and the Crusades, 1305–1378 (1986), and The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (1992).

Crusades in the West

The Spanish Reconquista is covered in Derek W. Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain (1978); and Bernard F. Reilly, The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain, 1031–1157 (1992). The best work on the Albigensian Crusade is Joseph R. Strayer, The Albigensian Crusades, with a new epilogue by Carol Lansing (1992).

Special topics

Military histories of the Latin East are available in R.C. Smail, Crusading Warfare, 1097–1193, 2nd ed. (1995); and Christopher Marshall, Warfare in the Latin East, 1192–1291 (1992). Art and architecture of the Latin East are discussed by T.S.R. Boase, Kingdoms and Strongholds of the Crusaders (1971); Hugh Kennedy, Crusader Castles (1994); and Jaroslav Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land (1995). Histories of the military orders are discussed in Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (1994); Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights of St. John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050–1310 (1967); and Eric Christiansen, The Northern Crusades: The Baltic and Catholic Frontier, 1100–1525, 2nd ed. (1997).

Crusade as metaphor

The history of the metaphoric use of the term crusade is addressed in several works cited above. Other useful studies are Paul Rousset, Histoire d’une idéologie, la Croisade (1983); Giles Constable, “The Historiography of the Crusades,” in Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (eds.), The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (2001); and James A. Brundage (ed.), The Crusades: Motives and Achievements (1964). A thoughtful introduction to the use of metaphor is George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980).