God's War: A New History of the Crusades

As with everything which happens in real history there is a spiritual basis to those crusades, and a philosophical explanation. History is philosophical, not factual. Because he ignores this, Tyreman is confused about why the various nobles and people left their homes to go on the crusade.

At the heart of Western life at the time of the First Crusade was the Mass, a ritual which is still perfomred today, and is still at the heart of Christian practice. It's purpose was to transport every Christian into God's love, and to the time when God was on earth, in Jerusalem.
The service uses objects to achieve this: bread and wine. Other objects were used outside the churches themlseves, such as relics, bones of saints, the holy lance and the grail. Being able to walk freely in the footsteps of Christ was another way of getting close to God.
This is why the crusaders, largely from France and England, decided to take possession of Jerusalem. Because God had become a man, and had taken onto himself blood, bones, feet, and the other trappings of life on earth, we can share in divine love by visiting and using those things. In the Holy Communion itself this process can only work because a priest blesses the wine and bread. Similarly, the crusade was only a means to enlarge the experience of the mass itself, to improve on that Last Supper, because the Pope had blessed those making the crusade. The moment of having a piece of Christ's body, and watching it miraculously disappear into the mouth, to make the participant thereby one of Christ's true disciples and to share in a mystical presence of power and love is not just a rite amongst others. It is the basis on which the knights, nobles, people, lords, and the rest all lived. If this rite and its link to Christ is taken away, as this book takes it away, then there is no reasonable explanation for the Crusade. Discovering the Holy Sepulchre was the equivalent of ingesting the Host.

It is unbelievable that such a metaphysical and idealistic impulse can have made our ancestors give up their lives and give up their security. However, the Church was at the heart of our culture in those days, and at the heart of Church was a re-enactment of the Last Supper. Becoming one of the members of the band who surrouned Jesus in his earthly life was the over-riding desire which guided all of the conscious choices of men and women at the time of the First Crusade. Personally, I see those people at the origin of European culture as superior to and more honest than ourselves.
I know that Tyreman is aware of the arguments I have made here. I wish that Oxford scholarship was not so dead and ignorant of its own past that it prohibits the outright expression of the inner core of our history: a belief in God, a belief in the value of objects and rites which take us closer to a mystery, a faith which wants to return our lives to the primitive simplicity which Christ enjoyed, based not on power, but on humility and service not to men, but to God.

Heavy going and boring (3/9 people found this helpful)

Big book, but does not seem to say a lot. I found it boring in the extreme without any real depth. A disappointment as I had expected more information and background on the characters involved. Instead, God's War seems to be more about the politics of the church,than the people who actually lived through the crusades. A missed opportunity for the author

A flawed masterpiece (15/20 people found this helpful)

Read the other reviews and you will see people either find this essential or annoyingly flawed. They are both right. No book has attempted to encompass not only the Eastern Crusades but also the crusading efforts in Northern Europe, Spain and looking at the later crusades too. Never has so much info covering so many cultures been crammed into 1 volume.

But, and it is a big but, there is an old literary saying "if you have a complex tale to tell then tell it simply" and this is where the book falls down. The language is dry and uses words such as fissiparous which means not only do you have to keep a plethora of characters, dates and events in your mind but you have to keep reaching for the dictionary too. It is also curiously unemotional when it comes to key/epic moments of the Crusades. I think Tyreman has confused being unbiased (which is appropriate given the topic)with being bland.

Also while the research is exhaustive and exhausting I do think the balance is a little odd, do we really need an exact itinerary of the preaching of the Second Crusade, Third Crusade and so on on to skim over things like what were the weapons and tactics of East versus West (this is hardly ever mentioned and never in any depth). Don't get me wrong the preaching is vital to the story but what made the crusades the crusades was the fighting and this does not get the same scrutiny as the liturgies going on in the Rhineland.

Saying that even an expert on the Crusades will find something new here, it's a very big mountain to climb (it took me months to get through and nobody can absorb it all after reading it just once) but the views from the top are spectacular.

Stay put, Sir Steven Runciman (27/37 people found this helpful)

It may be many decades since Sir Steven Runciman wrote his history of the crusades but his works still hold the double crown of interest and scholarliness. Christopher Tyerman's work is large, a physically heavy tome, and undoubtedly scholarly. It is however, written in a peculiarly academic style which makes much use of obscure words and written styles. Bookish, academic to a fault and clearly the product of the author's extensive understanding of the period. However, Christopher Tyerman fails to convey to me the fervour, passion and sheer excitement of this monumental period of East-West history. Sadly, I have put this book back on my shelf only one-third read.

The definitive work on the Crusades (21/22 people found this helpful)

Christopher Tyerman has produced the definitive work on The Crusades. Very well researched, even on the early Crusades where written records are scanty, compared to later in Crusader histery. Covers the the whole spectrum and mindworld of the men [ and women ] who for faith or greed, or a mixture of both, died and killed in pursuit of their dream of a Holy City, Jerusalem, and how once organized through preaching, propaganda and the giving and selling of indulgences through a smooth running Papal beaurocracy, the ritual of The Taking of the Cross became the mechanism for the slaughter of heretics, the pursuit of power and wealth by conquest, of Popes and Emperors and between Popes and Emperors, as well as the rise [ and fall ] of the Military Orders such as The Templars, Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights. Well written and an excellent read.

God's War: A New History of the Crusades

Christopher Tyerman

Reader Reviews:

Why Crusade? (4/6 people found this helpful)

Heavy going and boring (3/9 people found this helpful)

A flawed masterpiece (15/20 people found this helpful)

Stay put, Sir Steven Runciman (27/37 people found this helpful)

The definitive work on the Crusades (21/22 people found this helpful)

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