The Crusades

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course will examine the medieval crusading movement from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. We will attempt to integrate and understand the crusades from the three traditions directly affected by the movement, that of western Christian Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic Eastern Mediterranean. In addition the course will examine the important consequences on the Jewish communities both in Europe and in the Holy Land. While tracing the rise and fall of the movement, the course focuses on a variety of themes in this chronological context. We will certainly examine the origins of the crusading movement and what might cause thousands of men, women and even children to leave their established lives and undertake the arduous journey to Jerusalem. In addition, the course will also focus on the role of the Western church, the colonizing activities of the Franks in the Holy Land, the crusading orders and the popular crusading responses and legends, and then growing disillusionment with the crusades. Since the memory of the medieval crusades remains a touchstone for the modern discourse regarding the Middle East, we will look at a modern understanding of the crusades. The course will look at modern depictions of the Crusades in both film and literature to see how current popular culture understands or misinterprets the historic legacy of these events, including the recent films and of course the treatment of the crusading orders in modern literature. More importantly, however, we will examine the legacy of Crusades and how this affects current world events outside of the relatively unimportant aspects of popular culture. This course will help you to understand the importance of this historically defining movement, which in the minds of some is still an ongoing concern. There will be some reading in the primary sources, an emphasis on the art and architecture of the time, and a concern to examine the cultural clashes and accommodations between the Latin West and the Islamic East.