Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades

Jonathan Phillips traces the history of the Crusades from the capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade through the later medieval campaigns and the long afterlife of crusading language. Rather than presenting holy war as a single, unchanging phenomenon, he explores the different motives, beliefs and political circumstances that brought people into crusading movements and shaped encounters between Latin Christians, Muslims, Byzantines and other communities.

Drawing on chronicles, sermons, songs, travel accounts, letters and treaties, Phillips brings both famous figures and less familiar participants into the narrative, including Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. He also follows the changing reputation of crusading after the Middle Ages and the later reuse of its imagery and vocabulary. Broad in scope and strongly narrative, the book offers an accessible history of the Crusades while showing how contested memories of them continued to influence later cultures and politics.