"Like all volumes of this nature, <i>The Second Crusade: Holy War at the Periphery of Latin Christendom</i> is likely to be of greatest utility as a vehicle for the several particularly strong articles on diverse topics it contains. (...) the editors have done an admirable job at wrangling them into a coherent framework." (Miguel Dolan Gómez, in The Medieval Review, 2016.11.09)

“(…) this scholarly tome is meant for (…) advanced or knowledgeable readers” (Raymond J. Cormier, in Mediaevistik, 29, 2016, p. 463)

Summary

A seminal article published by Giles Constable in 1953 focused on the genesis and expansion in 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 and 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.

Jason T. Roche is a Lecturer in Medieval History at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests cover the history of the crusades and the Latin East and the topography of medieval Anatolia and the Near East.

Janus Møller Jensen is head of department at Nyborg Castle, Museums of Eastern Funen, Denmark. His main research interests cover the history and historiography of the Crusades and Scandinavian medieval history.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface by Jason T. Roche and Janus Møller Jensen

Contributors - List of Maps - Abbreviations

Introduction

The Second Crusade: Main Debates and New Horizons
Jason T. Roche

Part I: The Second Crusade and Holy War

The True Year of Jubilee: Bernard of Clairvaux on Crusade and Indulgences
Ane L. Bysted

Remembering Kings in Jerusalem: The Historia Nicaena vel Antiochena and Royal Identity around the Time of the Second Crusade
Deborah Gerish

A Muslim Response to the Second Crusade: Ibn ʿAsākir of Damascus as Propagandist of Jihad
Suleiman A. Mourad and James E. Lindsay

Part II: Peripheral Impact and the March towards the Holy Land

Poland and the Second Crusade
Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński

The Second Crusade and the Significance of Crusading in Scandinavia and the North Atlantic Region
Janus Møller Jensen

King Conrad III in the Byzantine Empire:A Foil for Native Imperial Virtue
Jason T. Roche

Part III: Expanding the Frontiers

Reconquest and the Second Crusade in Eastern Iberia: The Christian Expansion in the Lower Ebro Valley
Luis García-Guijarro Ramos

The Capture of Lisbon: Premeditated or Opportunistic?
Susan B. Edgington

‘Why Have You Come with Weapons Drawn?’ The Leaders of the Wendish Campaign of 1147
Jay T. Lees

The ‘First Swedish Crusade’ against the Finns: A Part of the Second Crusade?
John H. Lind

Index - Maps