In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages represent the most violent of historical eras, and the crusades are the apogee of medieval violence. The definitions of the key terms of here – crusade and violence – can be elusive, making scholarly analysis of these widely accepted ideas challenging. In this monograph, Singi Kangas examines sources related to the First Crusade (1096–9) to examine how they treat battlefield conduct, relations between Christians and Muslims, and a wide variety of other ancillary themes. In addition to the traditional and voluminous Latin chronicles of the crusade, Kangas discusses legal sources, later vernacular narratives and the chansons de geste of the later Middle Ages. The result is the most wide-ranging discussion of the intersection between violence and holy war yet published.

After an introduction to both the problem, the vocabulary and the key sources, Kangas divides her analysis into three chapters. They are quite long. Indeed, the latter two are well over a hundred pages each and probably could have served as foundations for separate, free-standing monographs. The first and shortest of these chapters, on ‘Canonical theory’, is probably the strongest of the three. To a degree it traces a path familiar to crusade historians, showing the development of just war theory from Classical sources through Augustine and then to canon lawyers during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But Kangas quickly takes this familiar narrative in a refreshingly new direction. The kinds of issues which interest modern commentators on war and violence, she demonstrates, were of less concern to their medieval predecessors. Eleventh- and early twelfth-century thinkers focused mainly on ius ad bellum, the justification for war, as opposed to ius in bello, the justness of conduct during a war. When medieval canonists broached the latter topic, they were concerned chiefly with soldiers’ intentions, a topic that is, Kangas acknowledges, utterly subjective. If soldiers gave themselves over to thoughtless violence, categorised as crudelitas in medieval texts, it indicated a moral failing, usually a predisposition toward rapacity, avaritia. All violence committed during war was sinful and subject to penance, even if the cause for that war was just. In the later eleventh century, however, canonists such as Anselm of Lucca and Ivo of Chartres began carving out exceptions. Acts of violence committed against an unbelieving enemy in a war waged under the authority of God and his representative on earth, the pope, were not subject to the usual ecclesiastical penalties. Kangas makes a convincing case that the papacy, and Urban ii in particular, was carefully laying the groundwork for a campaign like the crusade, though, as she acknowledges, the meaning of the indulgence offered to crusaders remains elusive.

The next two, longer, chapters function as parallel extended essays. The first, ‘Military tradition’, examines crusading violence as it relates to the practical concerns of military activity. The second, ‘Crusader belief’, returns to theme of the ideology behind crusading, but with an accent on beliefs as they animated the crusaders themselves rather than on ethical systems imagined by clerics. Each chapter is extraordinarily evocative of the experience of crusading, The breadth of evidence assembled is dazzling, and Kangas has chosen several manuscript illustrations that neatly illustrate her material. Kangas is particularly effective in showing how the ideas in historical chronicles and literary texts echo one another, though at times it can be difficult to discern whether she is reconstructing actual events and beliefs or whether she is focused on what chroniclers thought and remembered of the crusade. A more consistent engagement with theoretical questions of narratology might have benefited the book’s presentation. Additionally, unlike the earlier chapter on canonical theory, it can be difficult to tease unifying arguments from within this rich trove of observation and analysis. Kangas, for example, devotes lengthy sections in each of the longer chapters to Christian attitudes toward Islam. She writes evocatively of a ‘great encounter’ between Frankish and Muslim champions in battle narratives and notes as well that this model is not characteristic of the earliest text, the Gesta Francorum. It is not clear, however, if this lacuna in the Gesta is part of a historical pattern (perhaps a chivalric refinement of crusading memory) or simply evidence of two competing strategies for crafting battle narrative. These chapters do make for a challenging and immersive reading experience, but their central arguments are not as carefully delineated as one might hope.

The breadth of evidence is also problematic in that it veers away from the subject of the book, which is to say the First Crusade. Thirteenth-century and later vernacular chronicles and chansons about the First Crusade are fair game, especially since they might demonstrate the development of both narrative and memory. But the book also integrates into its analysis evidence and events completely unrelated to that campaign. Kangas, for example, discusses the Order of the Templars (founded thirty years after the Crusade), papal bulls for later crusades and anecdotes about Richard the Lionheart (Third Crusade), Robert of Clari (Fourth Crusade) and Jean de Joinville (Seventh Crusade). This easy mixing of material suggests an argumentative preference for continuity. Perhaps the commonality of phenomena related to crusading subsumes most of the apparent differences crusading sources. If that is the case, it would seem to undercut the premise of the monograph, which is that it is possible to study in isolation the problem of violence committed during the First Crusade and later memorialised in western sources.

This sense of fundamental historical continuity, however, is in harmony with one of the book’s major premises, that military violence enacted on crusade is very much like military violence as practised elsewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages. Kangas writes, for example, that ‘warfare in the East was no more – or less – violent’ than it would have been in the west (p. 114). The penitential warfare of crusading, she observes, ‘differed only slightly’ from military activity at home (p. 180). About the famous massacre of Muslims in Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, she writes that the crusaders were following ‘the same general rules for repressing violence’ as they would have done elsewhere (p. 319). It seems to me a surprising argument. The chapter on canon law demonstrates meticulously how churchmen gave the Franks unprecedented moral leeway; effectively, they could for the first time kill in battle without spiritual consequence. Indeed, they could kill and receive spiritual benefit. Like previous historians, Kangas argues that during the great sieges of the First Crusade, the Franks were applying the accepted rules of warfare, such that if a city surrendered, its inhabitants were spared, but if it were captured by force, the defenders’ lives were forfeit. From there she suggests that ‘it seems reasonable to assume’ that even after the fall of Jerusalem, a number of Muslims were able to ransom themselves. In fact, the only survivors noted were spared so that they could remove corpses from the city (p. 160). Kangas also notes elsewhere that the Franks unusually tortured Jerusalem’s defenders after they had conquered it (p. 322) and that chroniclers described the violence in deliberately apocalyptic terms (p. 331). All of these points would seem to suggest that there was something atypical about this style of combat. The argument itself, that crusading violence is hardly different from normal military violence, is both respectable and defensible, but to make the case effectively, one would need to compare evidence of crusading violence to similar acts of large-scale violence committed against Christian enemies in Europe; but that case is not made here.

These criticisms ought not to distract from the wonderful cornucopia of ideas, evidence and anecdote that Kangas brings together so eloquently in this volume. For students of the crusade who wish to immerse themselves in the text and texture of our sources, there is no finer introduction. Specialist readers will also appreciates the several rare gems that Kangas unearths in the course of her presentation. The analysis of canon law and crusading is essential reading. The chapters on military tradition and crusading belief are not as concise and convincing, but they none the less will prove foundational and inspirational for future researchers.