One of the hard parts of being a historian is both the blessing and curse of hindsight. Knowing what has happened allows us to write longue durée studies, show causation, and explain effects—but that same knowledge at times hinders our study of motivations, of failures, and of attempts that never make it off the ground. Constantinos Georgiou's Preaching the Crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean works to rectify this trend, focusing on the work done by the first four Avignon popes to organize another crusade to the Levant and, specifically, the preaching campaigns they organized. We know that in the aftermath of the fall of Acre in 1291, no further Jerusalem-focused crusades made it to the Levantine coast; the Avignon popes of the early fourteenth century, however, did not know that their efforts would end in relative failure. In the years 1305–1352, the popes launched repeated, sustained, and innovative preaching campaigns, liturgical movements, and diplomatic efforts to put together a large, effective crusade to Jerusalem. Their failure notwithstanding, this book provides an excellent introduction to the complex efforts of fourteenth-century popes to launch further crusades.

The introduction sets the stage for the fourteenth century papal preaching campaigns. It covers all of the relevant material that can be assembled on the history of crusade preaching, providing a rich bibliographic entry into the field, though parts feel a bit more like a literature review than one might like. Chapter 1 lays out the historical background on the reigns of popes Clement V and John XXII and their crusading attempts. This chapter pays particular attention to the papacy's overreliance on the support of the French crown for crusading endeavors. Chapter 2 does the same for Benedict XII and Clement VI, covering a shorter period of time, which nonetheless witnessed greater success in its military goals, culminating in the Smyrna Crusade in 1344. While it is hard to legitimately claim any period of crusading is ignored, the first half of the fourteenth century is certainly one of the less-studied crusading periods, and these two chapters serve as a welcome introduction to an understudied topic.

It is in chapter 3 that this book hits its stride and that Georgiou's main contributions come into view—a careful investigation of preaching events across western Europe undertaken by the Avignon popes between 1305 and 1352, with specific examinations of the popular, delayed reactions that followed. One might wish that this chapter had been fully integrated into the historical background chapters, as the power of the book's argument finally shines forth, but as a standalone section it shows how impactful the sermons and liturgical practices of the papacy were. For example, Georgiou points out that “Neither the employment of secular and regular clergy, nor the use of liturgical measures during crusade campaigns, were innovations in the early fourteenth century, but the intensive use of preaching and liturgy in combination during the Hospitallers’ passagium campaign were unparalleled,” (100) before going on to show that the Avignon popes massively increased that combination over the next forty years. The last section of the chapter, examining the popular responses to this preaching in the three great outbursts of crusading (the People's Crusade of 1309, the Shepherd's Crusade of 1320, and the second phase of the Smyrna Crusade of 1345, pages 108–120), is speculative, especially in discussing the delayed bursts of crusading fervor in 1309 and 1320. At the same time, it is a perfectly executed case study of the importance of the study of sermons and liturgy when dealing with bursts of popular crusading, and the links made between earlier crusade preaching and the popular crusades are thoroughly compelling.

Finally, chapter 4 examines the actual preachers of the crusade and their surviving sermons, editions of which occupy the five appendices to the book. This chapter alone makes the book worth acquiring—a detailed examination of sermons within the context of the liturgy, the crusading period, and the educational background of the Paris-trained preachers who delivered them. Georgiou not only explains the theological and literary construction of these sermons in great detail but contextualizes them alongside previous crusading sermons and within the liturgical calendar in which they were delivered. It is by far the strongest chapter of the book, and the five appendices (which cover pages 193–268) provide shelf marks of the surviving manuscripts and excellent editions for four of the sermons. One can only hope that Georgiou's work on these four texts will become a model for future analysis of other surviving crusade sermons. The short conclusion is an excellent and clear summary of the importance of the work, and of future areas of research.

For all its strengths, one might wish for stronger integration of the historical background of the Avignon popes and crusades of the first two chapters and the in-depth analysis of texts of the second two. At times the book feels like two closely related but separate projects that have been crammed together—a study of the crusading endeavors of the Avignon papacy and an in-depth analysis of crusading sermons in the first half of the fourteenth century—and need to be intermixed. Despite this, Constantinos Georgiou's Preaching the Crusades to the eastern Mediterranean is a worthy acquisition for any research library or scholar interested in medieval sermons, the later crusades, or the fourteenth-century papacy. This reviewer eagerly looks forward to Georgiou's future work.