Summary of Dan Jones's Crusaders

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The count of Sicily, Roger, lifted his leg and farted. By the truth of my religion, he exclaimed, there is more use in that than in what you have to say. His advisors stood chastened. The plan they had recommended was not a good one, as courtiers’ plans often are.
#2 Roger, count of Sicily, was born around the year 1040. He was the eleventh-century Europe’s ultimate self-made man. He had left his homelands in what is now north-west France and set out for territory that had called many of his kinsmen and countrymen: the rich but unstable southern Italian regions of Calabria and Apulia.
#3 The Norman invasion of southern Italy was not well received by everyone, and some even viewed them as a filthy and tyrannical bunch. But over time, the papacy began to view the Normans as useful allies who could be used to advance the church’s agenda.
#4 The conquest of Sicily was a holy mission that required a substantial earthly justification. The island contained some of the finest farmland in the Mediterranean, and its Muslim emirs had improved the agricultural methods there.

Sujets

• Religion
• Philosophie et théologie
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 24 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822547735
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Dan Jones's Crusaders
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The count of Sicily, Roger, lifted his leg and farted. By the truth of my religion, he exclaimed, there is more use in that than in what you have to say. His advisors stood chastened. The plan they had recommended was not a good one, as courtiers’ plans often are.

#2

Roger, count of Sicily, was born around the year 1040. He was the eleventh-century Europe’s ultimate self-made man. He had left his homelands in what is now north-west France and set out for territory that had called many of his kinsmen and countrymen: the rich but unstable southern Italian regions of Calabria and Apulia.

#3

The Norman invasion of southern Italy was not well received by everyone, and some even viewed them as a filthy and tyrannical bunch. But over time, the papacy began to view the Normans as useful allies who could be used to advance the church’s agenda.

#4

The conquest of Sicily was a holy mission that required a substantial earthly justification. The island contained some of the finest farmland in the Mediterranean, and its Muslim emirs had improved the agricultural methods there.

#5

Roger I, the count of Sicily, was a very popular Christian overlord who ruled over a very rich and diverse population. He built and sponsored churches and monasteries on the island, and forced the conversion of the local Muslims.

#6

The story of Roger’s refusal to extend his success in Sicily by sponsoring an invasion of Ifriqiya is a perplexing one. It comes down to us via a scholar named Ibn al-Athir, who lived and died in Mosul between 1160 and 1233.

#7

The eastern Mahgreb is the portion of north Africa’s coastal littoral roughly covered by north-eastern Algeria, Tunisia, and north-western Libya. It was invaded by the Normans in 1061.

#8

Ibn Hamdis, a young Muslim poet, was exiled from Sicily in the 1070s. He went to live with King Muhammad al-Mu’tamid of Seville, where he became a salaried companion. He yearned eternally for his homeland, but things were at least good for a moment.

#9

The city of Seville, which lent its name to the kingdom, lay some 125 miles north of the Strait of Gibraltar. Its dominions stretched from Silves and the Algarve on the Atlantic coast of modern Portugal to Murcia in the east.

#10

Alfonso VI, king of Castile and León, was the most powerful Christian monarch in Spain. He was also known as El Bravo because of his strength in both judgment and arms. He was determined to expand his kingdom’s borders, and it was a bold ruler who dared to stand in his way.

#11

The ambitions of Alfonso and other Christian rulers were strongly encouraged from the papal court in Rome. The pope wanted to eliminate the Mozarabic liturgy, which many Arabized Christians in Spain had, and replace it with the Latin one.

#12

The attack on Barbastro in 1063 was a clear example of how Rome was supporting the expansion of Christian states into Spain. When Alfonso VI sent one of his lords south to collect the paria tribute due from the taifa of Granada, ʿAbd Allah made it clear that he understood exactly which way the wind was blowing.

#13

The Battle of Barbastro in 1076 was the first time that Muslims in Spain were subjugated by a Christian king. The conquest of Toledo in 1085 was a watershed, as it shocked the Islamic world.

#14

The poet-king al-Mu’tamid had been roundly humiliated by Alfonso, who with the fall of the taifa of Toledo now became his direct neighbor. To protect himself, al-Mu’tamid looked south to Morocco and western Algeria, where power lay in the hands of a notoriously vicious and puritanical sect of Berbers known as the Almoravids.

#15

The Almoravids were a Berber dynasty that took over the taifa kingdoms in the south after al-Mu’tamid’s defeat in 1091. They were a Muslim empire that owed religious allegiance to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. Little territory had been gained back from the Christian states of the north.

#16

The poet Ibn al-Labbana wrote of the sight of al-Mu’tamid leaving his kingdom, which was apparently a pitiful one. He died in 1095, and his rival Alfonso VI lived on until 1109 when he died while still defending Toledo from Almoravid attack.

#17

The birth of Anna Komnene was a privilege for her family. She was born in the Porphyry Chamber, which was reserved for the children of reigning emperors.

#18

Anna Komnene’s gift to her parents and to scholarship was to write a history of her father’s reign, the Alexiad, which was published in Greek in 1118. It was a highly exculpatory book that explained the events between Alexios’s rise to power in 1081 and his death in 1118.

#19

The Byzantine empire, which was the successor to the Roman empire, was still linguistically and culturally Greek. But in reality, it was the descendant of the Roman empire. The city of Constantinople, which was the empire’s capital, was packed with elegant buildings and great civic spaces.

#20

The Byzantine Empire was facing many problems in 1081, when Alexios I seized the throne from Nikephoros III. The Norman adventurers Robert Guiscard and Roger I of Sicily had taken Calabria and Apulia, and were consolidating their gains in Sicily.

#21

The Seljuqs were a group of Turko-Persian tribes that invaded the Byzantine Empire in the 1090s. They were as effective as their reputation suggested. By 1091, the empire was beset on all sides.

#22

Alexios’s decision to appeal outside the empire for support was not particularly novel. In Byzantium, military alliances were the norm, and the size of the empire often necessitated realpolitik rather than stiff-necked dogmatism.

#23

In 1091, the Byzantine Empire was facing a crisis. The Seljuq Turks had begun to take over cities in the east and west, and the emperor had to ask for western help.

#24

In the mid-1090s, Alexios needed help in the west, and he found it in the form of the Christians of Flanders. Not all Kelts were bad, and Alexios was willing to turn to them as allies when he felt it was in the empire’s best interests.

#25

The letter was sent by Alexios, but it was also sent on his behalf by other emperors. It was a clear attempt to stir up Christians in the west against the enemies of Byzantium, and hopefully they would help the emperor against the supposed perpetrators.

#26

Alexios was not stupid. He knew that the Franks he called in to help him against the Turks were not the veiled Islamic puritans who had crossed from Morocco to southern Spain at the beckoning of al-Mu’tamid of Seville. But he called for them anyway.

#27

Pope Urban II was elected in 1088, and he was not impressed with his coronation. He had learned a lot about the political rivalry between the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy See during his time as cardinal-bishop of Ostia.

#28

Urban II, the pope who elected the first pope of the Avignon Papacy, was a monk at the Cluniac abbey of Cluny in Burgundy. Cluniac monasteries were founded by Duke William I The Pious of Aquitaine in the year 910. Their members were the Cluniac Order, a body of churchmen whose shared identity emphasized an overarching international unity as well as deep seriousness of purpose.

#29

Odo of Lagery was a young man when he traveled to Cluny and joined the prestigious mother house. He flourished under the tenure of the great statesman and future saint Abbot Hugh, who promoted him to the position of prior of Cluny.

#30

The story of Majolus, the abbot of Cluny, was a famous one that displayed the monks’ ability to heal dog-bites and cure ailments like blindness, paralysis, and fever. The Arabs of Fraxinet had kidnapped Majolus, offered him the chance to convert to Islam, and when he refused, they threw him in a cave.

#31

Urban II’s vision of the church was similar to that of Cluny Abbey: centralized, expansionist, and alive to the possibilities of popular devotion. He also approved of attacks on the forces of Islam in the Mediterranean theater.

#32

Urban II, Odo’s successor, was also deeply influenced by the reform pope Gregory VII, who had transformed the position of the papacy in Christendom. He sought to rally the faithful of western Christendom behind a common cause.

#33

In March 1095, Alexios’s ambassadors found Urban at Piacenza in Lombardy, a way-station for pilgrims on their way to Rome. The pope was holding a synod to debate and pronounce upon issues ranging from royal scandal to ecclesiastical reform. The ambassadors implored him to help them against the pagans, who had almost destroyed the holy Church in that region.

#34

Urban II’s decision to support Alexios was not impulsive. He had been encouraging Christian kings such as Alfonso VI and Roger, count of Sicily, to fight against Islamic rulers for a long time.

#35

Urban’s tour came to an end with a huge ceremony at Clermont, where he officially blessed the high altar. He spoke of an urgent task that belonged to both God and the Church: the Turks, a Persian people, had attacked the Romans, and needed to be exterminated.

#36

The great stirring began at the theater at Clermont, when Pope Urban II preached about the need to take the cross and conquer Jerusalem.

#37

The pope’s armed pilgrimage was alive with volunteers. When Urban gave his sermon at Clermont, he had hoped to set the church militant on the march. He had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

#38

The first and least likely crusade leader was Peter the Hermit, a religious recluse from Picardy who became the first and in many ways the least likely leader. He gained both honor and notoriety as he took the first Christian army out of the west and along the Danube towards Constantinople.

#39

The first factions of the People’s Crusade had already started to appear in Byzantium by th