The First Crusade was one of the most extraordinary, bloody and significant episodes in medieval history. It began with an appeal for aid from the Christian Byzantine Empire, threatened by the rising ...

In 1095, Pope Urban II preached a fiery sermon that changed the course of Western history: he urged Christian warriors to take up the sword and defend their brothers in the East who had been defeated ...

In 1096, tens of thousands of Christians set out from Western Europe to oust Muslim overlords from Jerusalem, 2,000 miles away. By 1099, against almighty odds, the crusaders took the city by slaughter ...

Since the moment they began in the late 11th century, historians have tried to figure out the so-called "Crusades." The capture of Jerusalem in 1099 CE spurred a massive amount of writing in the ...

Is there a historical episode less understood by the general public and more urgently in need of clarification than the Crusades? To some on the right, the Crusades prefigured the modern wars that ...

It was at a speech made outside Clermont Ferrand that Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to claim the holy city of Jerusalem for Christianity, and wrest it from Islamic control. This was the start of ...