58: John France illuminates the Crusades

I spoke to a veterinarian-and-amateur-historian recently, and he turned me onto the Crusades. I’ll admit, I hadn’t thought much about them beyond the basic line: zealous Christians from Europe led failed (and very bloody) military attempts to hold Jerusalem and other parts of Jesus' old stomping grounds. The leaders, I remembered, were surely motivated by greed and holy-war violence. 

Not so fast, says professor emeritus John France. The truth of things is more nuanced and multifaceted, but, yes, still very violent and bloody. But this medieval historian argues compellingly that, well, we forget, as moderns, just how bloody medieval Europe was—how violence was a common experience for generation after generation there. France was there in academia for a slow sea change in medieval history, where they revisited the myth that all these crusaders were hungry for power and gold. (They actually spent a lot of their own money on these religious excursions.) 

Find out what you didn’t know about the Crusades with the brilliant professor emeritus from Swansea University in Wales, the delightful and thoughtful John France ... 

To Feed Further Curiosity:  

• I have been reading an edition of The Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden. It has a lot of names and locations that are hard to track, and it goes by pretty fast, but Madden writes with an excited, passionate voice and carries me through the moments when I get lost and hope to find purchase in the timeline again. Most illuminating are the different reasons and results of the separate crusades and groups gathered up under the umbrella of “crusading.” 
• France credits Jonathan Riley-Smith (The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading) with helping to change the vision of the Crusades from ruthless power grab to a more nuanced take. 
• France himself has written some academic books covered here. If you really want to go down the rabbit trail of medieval military tactics and history, France mentions De Re Militari.