Summary

  • This book covers the events of the major crusades, i.e. The 8 Crusades

First Crusade

  • Catholics took over the holy land
  • the Catholics massacred the native Muslim population after their conquest. Even Church leaders back in Rome were horrified when they heard about it.
  • non Catholics living in the Holy Land post-First-Crusade conquest preferred Islamic rule over Catholic rule
    • these Christians were of various ancient sects that were treated poorly by the Catholics

Fourth Crusade

  • what started off as a war to attack Egypt, the Crusaders switched their intention in the last minute and laid siege to Constantinople instead.
  • The result was a Catholic-ruled Constantinople for the next 60 years
  • The pope was against the attack on Constantinople, but didn’t seem to mind after the Catholics had control over it. He saw the benefit of it at the end.
  • The Crusaders sacked the city and destroyed churches as well as valuable artifacts. The list of artifacts and manuscripts destroyed required 3 massive volumes to document - p. 154
  • the Orthodox Christians in Greece were forcibly converted to Catholicism - p. 157

Analysis

This book is due for a re-read. My notes are lacking.