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Books

What it took to wage holy war, Medieval style

Jonathan Sumption reviews Christopher Tyerman’s How to Plan a Crusade

5 September 2015

9:00 AM

5 September 2015

9:00 AM

How to Plan a Crusade: Reason and Religious War in the Middle Ages Christopher Tyerman

Penguin/Allen Lane, pp.432, £25, ISBN: 9781846144776

For most of history, religion and war have been the most powerful social instincts of mankind and its chief collective activities. In the crusades, they combined to create a movement of great emotional power, which convulsed Europe in the 12th century and retained its appeal to the military classes until the end of the Middle Ages.

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £20 Tel: 08430 600033. Jonathan Sumption is a justice of the Supreme Court, and is writing a history of the Hundred Years War, volume four of which was reviewed in our 29 August issue.

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