The Fourth Crusade : And the Sack of Constantinople

Resumen del libro

In April 1204, the armies of Western Christendom wrote another bloodstained chapter in the history of holy war. Two years earlier, aflame with religious zeal, the Fourth Crusade set out to free Jerusalem from the grip of Islam. But after a dramatic series of events, the crusaders turned their weapons against the Christian city of Constantinople, the heart of the Byzantine Empire and the greatest metropolis in the known world.

The crusaders spared no one in their savagery: they murdered and raped old and young - they desecrated churches, plundered treasuries and much of the city was put to the torch. Some contemporaries were delighted: God had approved this punishment of the effeminate, treacherous Greeks; others expressed shock and disgust at this perversion of the crusading ideal. History has judged this as the crusade that went wrong.

In this remarkable new assessment of the Fourth Crusade, Jonathan Phillips follows the fortunes of the leading players and explores the conflicting motives that drove the expedition to commit the most infamous massacre of the crusading movement.

Biografía del autor

Jonathan Phillips es profesor de Historia de las Cruzadas en el college Royal Holloway de la Universidad de Londres. Es autor de Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades: The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christianity; The Crusades. 1095x{0026} x02013;1197 y Vida y leyenda del sultán Saladino (Ático de los Libros, 2021), así como coeditor de tres colecciones de ensayos académicos sobre las cruzadas. Además, Phillips es coeditor de la revista académica Crusades, escribe para BBC History y History Today, y ha colaborado en numerosos programas de radio y televisión.