History of the Crusades

There is a new book about the crusades which is supposed to be the most thorough and balanced one yet. According to a review by Philip Blosser:

The Crusades were clearly attempts to meet the challenge of the Muslim conquests of Christian lands in the East. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that Crusading, far from being a lucrative undertaking, was notoriously bad as an economic investment. Many wealthy noblemen were practically bankrupted by mounting a Crusading expedition. Rather, as Peters shows, a spiritual purpose animated Crusaders: While killing was normally wrong, avenging the deaths of fellow Christians as instruments of God's justice came to be seen as a positively redemptive undertaking. Crusading, as Riley-Smith has argued, was understood in this light as "an act of love" -- articulated as a self-sacrificial ideal in Christ's words, "Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends" (Jn. 15:13). In Madden's view, the two primary goals of the Crusades were, first, to rescue Christians of the East who had been conquered by Muslim invaders and, second, to liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Land, which had been made holy by the Incarnation and earthly life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

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