Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 1453-1505

Norman Housley (Professor of History, University of Leicester)

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English

Oxford University Press
13 December 2012

European history; Medieval history; Crusades; History of religion

The fifty years that followed Mehmed II's capture of Constantinople in 1453 witnessed a substantial attempt to revive the crusade as the principal military mechanism for defending Christian Europe against the advance of the Ottoman Turks. Norman Housley's study investigates the origins, character, and significance of this ambitious programme. He locates it against the broad background of crusading history, and assesses the extent to which protagonists and lobbyists for a crusade managed to refashion crusading to meet the Turkish threat, combining traditional practices with new outlooks and techniques. He pays particular attention to diplomatic exchanges and political decision-making, military organization, communication, and devotional behaviour.

Housley demonstrates the impressive scale of the effort that was made to create a crusading response to the Turks. Crusaders were recruited in very large numbers between 1454 and 1464, and in 1501-3 substantial sums of money were raised through the vigorous preaching of indulgences in the Holy Roman Empire. But while the crusading cause was recognized as important and urgent, the mobilization of resources was prejudiced by the volatile nature of international politics, and by the weakness of the Renaissance papacy. Even when frontline states such as Hungary and Venice welcomed crusading contributions to their conflicts with the Ottomans, building robust structures of cooperation proved to be beyond the ability of contemporaries. As the Middle Ages drew to a close, the paradox of crusade was that its promotion and finance impacted on the lives of Catholics more than its instruments affected the struggle for domination of the Mediterranean Sea and south-eastern Europe.

By: Norman Housley (Professor of History University of Leicester)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 162mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780199227051
ISBN 10: 0199227055
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 13 December 2012
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1: Introduction 2: Underpinnings: antagonisms and allegiances 3: Strategy, mobilization, and control 4: Recruitment and finance 5: Communication 6: Indulgences and the crusade against the Turks 7: Conclusion Bibliography Index

Norman Housley was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire in 1952, and educated there and at Cambridge University. Since 1983 he has worked at the University of Leicester, holding visiting fellowships at Oxford, Princeton, and Washington. Housley has spent his professional life working on the crusades, with the emphasis on crusading in the late Middle Ages. He has published thirteen authored or edited books on the crusades. He has enjoyed a long relationship with Oxford University Press, with whom this is his fifth book.

Reviews for Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 1453-1505

Overall, it is an impressive contribution to Housleys voluminous body of work on crusading in a Europe undergoing significant political, religious, and cultural transformation. Scott Rank, European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire