HIST 326
The Crusades: 1050-1550 Spring 2025
Division II

The Crusades present a number of fascinating interpretive challenges for the historian. Were they a project of elites, or a genuine popular movement? Did they bring Latin Christians into closer dialogue with religious others, or did they foster greater intolerance and oppression? How did Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Christians respond to the Crusades? In this class, we will explore the Crusades as they were experienced by both the participants and their victims, in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. We will discuss the intellectual and political origins of the crusading movement, review the course of the expeditions to the Holy Land and elsewhere, and see how the idea of Crusade was used and abused by popes, kings and queens, poets, and intellectuals, for their own purposes for centuries. By the end of the class, students will have a sense of how the experience of crusading shaped not only internal European politics, but also relationships between Europe and the rest of the world.