This book is definitely a new word in crusader studies, the first detailed work on the attitude of the West to the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 and later on. In this very thorough piece of research Rajohnson demonstrates how, little by little, the West tacitly recognised the loss of the Holy City, and the latter lost its former importance. Many parts of the book are entirely new and sometimes include analysis of manuscripts and their miniatures in particular. It is impossible to address all parts of this voluminous study in a concise review, so I will concentrate on what is in my opinion the most valuable for the scholarship.

In my view, among the most relevant parts of the book which open new perspectives on crusading studies are observations made on the reception of Lamentations during the crusading era (pp. 223–48). In fact, the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 favoured an extensive presence of quotations from Lamentations in various crusade-related sources. The same period can be characterised by a considerable growth of interest in this book among the exegetes at the end of the twelfth century, and even more in the thirteenth. Rajohnson has studied various bible manuscripts and concluded that around 1187 Lamentations, often presented as a book not clearly separated from the Book of Jeremiah that was placed immediately before it, began to have the illuminated initials which finally distinguished it as a separate book. Furthermore, the prophet Jeremiah was deprived of various features of ethnic extraneity, which was not the case in rare miniatures of Lamentations dated prior to 1187: thus, the image could be associated with contemporary Christians lamenting the sorrowful fate of Jerusalem, not with the Old Testament. However, Jeremiah, no longer grieving so much, soon reappeared (pp. 744–50). This was probably part of the consecutive process of reconciliation with the loss of the city.

In a substantial section of the book (pp. 450–510), Rajohnson puts forward important observations about changing perceptions of the Holy Land and Jerusalem that occurred after 1187. These probably correlated with the crusade-related events: in liturgy and travel writing Jerusalem became the sorrowful place of Christ's passion rather than of his Resurrection; there are many fewer new imitations of the Anastasis (Resurrection) chapel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; Jerusalem and the Holy Land were more frequently said to be dedicated by Christ's blood; descriptions and maps of Jerusalem started to include only objects related to the Christian religion (even though this was not the case of the descriptions and maps of other cities by the same authors); the idea of the centrality of Jerusalem became more solid, even though more and more doubts soon arose, probably because of disillusion with the possibility of Jerusalem being reconquered (pp. 666–704). Of course, a great difficulty is that there are many fewer sources for the twelfth century than for later periods. Nevertheless Rajohnson is rather convincing.

Another interesting part of the book is a comparison of reactions to the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 and in 1244 (pp. 124–36, 733–44), demonstrating the very weak impact of the latter event. Obviously, the treaty of Jaffa, according to which Jerusalem was restored to Christians without the Temple Mount, was not regarded as a true re-appropriation of the Holy City. One can also mention very curious observations on how various chroniclers foreground some of their compatriot crusaders, while being silent about the others (pp. 326–7). The most prominent issue here is of course the rivalry of the English and French in the Third Crusade, as reflected in the pages of chronicles (pp. 332–3). Moreover, Rajohnson provides very curious examples of falsifications made by chroniclers in order to endorse the struggle for the reconquest of the Holy Land (for example, pp. 206, 212, 220, 335–6, 379–80, 414–15).

On pp. 87–9 there is a statement that should probably be discussed. Rajohnson argues that papal letters represent Saracens who conquered the Holy Land in 1187 as unconscious actors led by God who wanted to punish sinful Christians. At the same time the research on preaching-related sources (this Journal lxx [2019], 472–86) demonstrates that the position of God is much more subtle: he did not send the Saracens to the Holy Land, but at the same time he does not hinder their coming, and they remain his unwanted guests, preferred to sinful crusaders. A quotation from Innocent iii, provided by Rajohnson, confirms this suggestion: God allowed the Holy Land to be conquered, but did not order it.

The state of research, as reflected in the book, is slightly outdated. There is no mention of works by Constantinos Georgiou on the preaching of the crusades (mainly his Preaching the crusades to the eastern Mediterranean: propaganda, liturgy and diplomacy, 1305–1352, London 2018). A critical edition of Humbert of Romans's De predicatione crucis is indicated as forthcoming (p. 149), but in fact it was published in 2018. A lot is said on the historical memory of Saladin (pp. 767–80), but without references to the recent book by Jonathan Phillips (2020). The problem of the speed of arrival of news about the fall of Jerusalem is discussed at the beginning of the book (pp. 54–60), but there is no mention of an important article by Helen Birkett (‘News in the Middle Ages: news, communications and the launch of the Third Crusade in 1187–1188’, Viator il [2018], 23 –61). However, all these lacunae are probably simply due to the fact that publication of such a volume took a lot of time, and that the book was completely ready well before 2021.