How to Plan a Successful Crusade?

Type: 
Seminar
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Popper Room
Monday, March 17, 2014 - 1:30pm
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Date: 
Monday, March 17, 2014 - 1:30pm to 3:20pm

Crusaders have often been described as violent thugs battering and belabouring their way into the Near East and other places with little sense of order or direction beyond piously justified aggression. Although most of the large scale expeditions to the eastern Mediterranean from western Europe between 1095 and 1291 ended in failure this was not necessarily because of the absence or inadequacy of planning. This lecture will argue that crusade leaders conducted processes of planning that were, in their context, rigorous and focused. After looking at the nature of the evidence, the subject will be pursued by looking at seven aspects of the planning operation:

• Cause

• Publicity and propaganda

• Recruitment

• Finance

• Transport

• Campaign Plans

• Grand Strategy

Dr Christopher Tyerman is a Fellow and Tutor at Hertford College, University of Oxford, where he has taught since 1979. He has written many books and articles on the crusades, most recently God’s War (2006) and The Debate on the Crusades (2011).