A fresh perspective on the Crusade shows its ideal and practice
flourishing in the fourteenth century.
The central theme of this book is the largely untold story of English
knighthood's ongoing obsession with the crusade fight during the age of
Chaucer, "high chivalry" and the famous battles of the Hundred Years
War. After combat in France and Scotland, fighting crusades was the main
and a widespread experience of English chivalry in the fourteenth
century, drawing in noblemen of the highest rank, as well as knights
chasing renown and the jobbing esquire. The author exposes a thick seam
of military engagement along the perimeters of Christendom; details of
participants and campaigns are chronicled - in many cases for the first
time - and associated matters of tactics, diplomacy, organisation, and
recruitment are minutely analysed, adding substantially to the
historiography of the later crusades. The book's second theme traces the
surprisingly strong grip the crusade-idea possessed at the height of
politics, as an animating force of English kingship. Disputing the
common assumption that crusade plans were increasingly ill-treated by
the monarchs - adopted as diplomatic double-speak or as a means of
raiding church coffers - the authorargues that courtiers and knights
moved in a rich environment of crusade speculation and ambition, and
exercised a strong influence on the culture of the time.
Timothy Guard gained his DPhil at Hertford College, University of
Oxford. He is Head of History at Rugby School.
