Crusade

The Uses of a Word from the Middle Ages to the Present

Benjamin Weber

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Routledge
29 September 2025

Historiography; European history; Medieval history; Social & cultural history; History of religion

Series: Crusades - Subsidia

The word ‘crusade’ covers today a wide variety of meanings in most European languages. The link between these uses and the historical phenomenon labelled as ‘crusade’ by historians is often very narrow and particularly changing. Understanding the real meaning of the word ‘crusade’, its connotations and implications, and thus the conscious or unconscious intentions of its uses requires a precise knowledge of the historical evolutions of the word, from its first appearance in the 13th century until nowadays.

This book offers the first comprehensive view of the historical construction of the meaning of the word ‘crusade’ through comparative perspectives from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Its 11 articles, introduction and conclusion examine different uses of the word, in a single language or within a specific context, and analyse each of them as a different conceptualisation of the crusading phenomenon. The book explains the progressive widening of the meaning of the term, from a military expedition to Jerusalem to the most metaphorical uses. It demonstrates the differences between the connotations of the word in various languages and cultures and, thus, the variety of its possible uses. It insists on the reluctance and reticence that ‘crusade’ has always provoked since the Middle Ages, precisely because the conceptualisation it implied was not shared by all.

The book will be of interest not only for crusade scholars and for diachronic linguists but also for anyone interested in understanding better modern discourses and references to the ‘crusade’ by politicians, activists, and journalists, through a precise inquiry on the historical developments of the word and the variety of its meanings.

Edited by: Benjamin Weber
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781032442365
ISBN 10: 1032442360
Series: Crusades - Subsidia
Pages: 182
Publication Date: 29 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Benjamin Weber, PhD in medieval history, is an associate researcher at the University of Toulouse, France and at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. He has published several books and articles on the history of the crusades in the end of the Middle Ages, and, more recently, on historical linguistics of the word 'crusade'.