FRANCISCO JOS BOCERO. DE LA ROSA
Description
Did you know that the first crusader king to reach Jerusalem was the Viking Sigurd of Norway? That Eleanor of Aquitaine was the first woman to embark
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on a crusade? That the Assassins sect tried three times to take the life of Saladin himself? That St. Francis of Assisi appeared before the sultan of Egypt to convince him to convert to Christianity and achieved a truce in the middle of the Fifth Crusade? Or that Emperor Frederick II recaptured Jerusalem without firing a single arrow and after being excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX? Conceived as an armed pilgrimage in the name of God, the Crusades constitute a decisive event in the Middle Ages whose memory and debate are still very much alive today. The adjective "crusader" is still used by the combatants of the self-styled Islamic State to refer to the West, almost a thousand years later, and its influence and fascination is the subject of study, research and interest on the part of historians, history lovers and readers who are fans of the legends and enigmas that adorn its protagonists. From the incandescent call of Urban II to take up the cross in 1095 to the bloody fall of Saint John of Acre in 1291, the religious-military expeditions of the so-called crusaders are full of unique and almost always cruel episodes, but they also reveal acts of piety and mutual admiration, such as that between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin while they were fighting each other with all possible severity. In this book, Francisco José Bocero de la Rosa covers those two hundred years with simplicity and rigor, drawing from the sources of both sides to relate details and curiosities about kings and sultans, popes and their quarrels, the countless battles that took place and the political games of both sides that ended up marking the destiny of the West. A historical review of the most outstanding chapters of the titanic enterprise for the conquest of the so-called Holy Land, a region whose yearnings keep it wrapped up in a permanent and insurmountable conflict.
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