Jason T . Roche

This book represents the first work of history dedicated to the crusade of King Conrad III of Germany (1146-1148), emperor-elect of the Western Roman Empire and the most powerful man yet to assume the Cross. Scrutinising and expounding the original source evidence to an unparalleled degree, and employing a range of innovative, multi-disciplinary approaches, this work challenges the traditional and more recent historiography at every turn leading to a significantly clearer and appreciably different understanding of the expedition’s complex and much-maligned history.

A seminal article published by Giles Constable in 1953 focused on the genesis and expansion in the scope of the Second Crusade, with particular attention to what has become known as the Syrian campaign. His central thesis maintained that by the spring of 1147 the Church ‘viewed and planned’ the Second Crusade as a general Christian offensive against the Muslims of Syria and the Iberian Peninsula and the pagan Wends of the southern Baltic lands. Constable’s work remains extremely influential and provides the framework for the recent major works published on this extraordinary twelfth-century phenomenon. This volume aims to readdress scholarly predilections for concentrating on the venture in the Near East and for narrowly focusing on the accepted targets of the crusade. It aims instead to place established, contentious, and new events and concepts associated with the enterprise in a wider ideological, chronological, geopolitical, and geographical context.