God’s War

"There are so many books that are simply called ‘the Crusades’, or variants on that theme (and the old classic, in English, is Sir Steven Runciman’s magnum opus ). So there is a vast range of work to choose from if you wanted to find a basic guide to the movement. But God’s War tells you everything that you need to know. It isn’t just enormous and comprehensive. It’s also the product of a lifetime’s rumination on the subject. And I have to confess that I have a particular fondness for it, because the author is my old doctoral supervisor! If I were to pick out what’s particularly good about God’s War , then it’s the fact that Tyerman refuses to accept simple answers to difficult questions. He sums it all up, very neatly, at the end. “ The internal decision to follow the Cross, to inflict harm on others at great personal risk, at the cost of enormous privations, at the service of a consuming cause, cannot be explained, excused or dismissed either as a virtue or a sin .” What he’s saying, in short, is that we need to accept the Crusades, in all their messy complexity, as something that is very real and very human. I think what Tyerman is saying is that we need to be more dispassionate about it. We want to see a clear moral message, but there simply can’t be one for something like this."