Open Bar: We're going to build a bar, and make the drinks pay for it!

[POFP]

And this is where I mention there are contemporary reports of Knights Templar in Jerusalem defending Muslim pilgrims from more zealous Christians from Europe who tried to harass them.

Oh. Forgive my ignorance.

In school I was taught that the Crusades were essentially Christians massacring those of other faiths, including Islam. Or, at least that was what stuck with me from the teachings. I guess I was referring to old knights of the crusades in the original post?

Not strictly true. The Crusades also had a whole bunch of Christians massacaring christian towns for plunder and giggles. Have a look at "The peoples crusade" that preceeded the main event and laugh at one of the first fullblown  shitshows of history. Peter the Hermit was a clown of the first order.

Aha, I stand corrected.



On a slightly related note to the Knights Templar, is it the whole organization that does silly rituals? Or is that just microcosms like DeMolay? Or all of Masonry? (I somewhat remember it being noted that the current Knights Templar was not directly connected to the medieval Knights Templar.)

[Cain]

And this is where I mention there are contemporary reports of Knights Templar in Jerusalem defending Muslim pilgrims from more zealous Christians from Europe who tried to harass them.

Oh. Forgive my ignorance.

In school I was taught that the Crusades were essentially Christians massacring those of other faiths, including Islam. Or, at least that was what stuck with me from the teachings. I guess I was referring to old knights of the crusades in the original post?

Not strictly true. The Crusades also had a whole bunch of Christians massacaring christian towns for plunder and giggles. Have a look at "The peoples crusade" that preceeded the main event and laugh at one of the first fullblown  shitshows of history. Peter the Hermit was a clown of the first order.

Aha, I stand corrected.



On a slightly related note to the Knights Templar, is it the whole organization that does silly rituals? Or is that just microcosms like DeMolay? Or all of Masonry? (I somewhat remember it being noted that the current Knights Templar was not directly connected to the medieval Knights Templar.)

I was mentioning it mostly because I find counterjihadist Templar fetishists pretty sad.  The Templars, as an order, understood Muslim politics better than most European leaders, let alone most of their citizens, and held a certain level of respect for them.

Other groups and orders, of course, disagreed, and did indeed slaughter and, in one case, possibly eat them.  Still pretty funny though.

Also, none of the modern Templar orders actually descend from the Templars.  It's all made up

[minuspace]

And this is where I mention there are contemporary reports of Knights Templar in Jerusalem defending Muslim pilgrims from more zealous Christians from Europe who tried to harass them.

This is where I start to photoshop a picture of Baphomet and the Eye of Providence saying to each other "You got Islamofascism in my Illuminati!!" ... "You got Illuminati in my Islamofascism!!".

But then I decide it's too much trouble, and I'm probably getting the joke wrong anyway.

The Devil meets Conjunctivitis in Big-Brother's Inquisition.

[Suu]

And this is where I mention there are contemporary reports of Knights Templar in Jerusalem defending Muslim pilgrims from more zealous Christians from Europe who tried to harass them.

Oh. Forgive my ignorance.

In school I was taught that the Crusades were essentially Christians massacring those of other faiths, including Islam. Or, at least that was what stuck with me from the teachings. I guess I was referring to old knights of the crusades in the original post?

Oh no no no no no.

Remember, the Christians only "won" the 1st.  The 2nd and 3rd the tides really turned, and then they just started killing each other off much to the head-scratching of the Seljuks. Fuck, half of the crusades never even made it to the Holy Land because of squabbling and really bad planning. The Nile Delta? REALLY?

I can recommend some books if you like. Education on the Crusades in the west is certainly lackluster and biased until you get into college-level courses.

[Suu]

Remember: This is America, we don't give a fuck.

On the contrary, we tend to give more fucks than Europe does in some groups, but the Ren fair crowd certainly has become lackluster since the people with any fucking talent went into actual living history groups, and then we let mediocre cosplayers get involved when they were shunned out of the convention circuit for being shitty.

We have armored combat teams that go to Europe and beat the Euro teams on their own turf. It only took us getting the floor mopped with us a couple of years, though. But they stuck with it.

[Junkenstein]

And this is where I mention there are contemporary reports of Knights Templar in Jerusalem defending Muslim pilgrims from more zealous Christians from Europe who tried to harass them.

Oh. Forgive my ignorance.

In school I was taught that the Crusades were essentially Christians massacring those of other faiths, including Islam. Or, at least that was what stuck with me from the teachings. I guess I was referring to old knights of the crusades in the original post?

Oh no no no no no.

Remember, the Christians only "won" the 1st.  The 2nd and 3rd the tides really turned, and then they just started killing each other off much to the head-scratching of the Seljuks. Fuck, half of the crusades never even made it to the Holy Land because of squabbling and really bad planning. The Nile Delta? REALLY?

I can recommend some books if you like. Education on the Crusades in the west is certainly lackluster and biased until you get into college-level courses.

If you could, I'd be interested. I only really know about the first and the shennagins building up to it. Planning wasn't exactly a strong suit of the period when dealing with the region. I'm pretty sure a few castles were lost because crusaders didn't realise they may need water supplies. In the desert.

[Cain]

Just seen a really great PhD/senior fellow opportunity. 

In Norway.

Which also requires a detailed 3000 word project description.

So now I just need to think of a project.

[Junkenstein]

Any ideas? And good luck, hopefully not required if the project fits.

[Suu]

And this is where I mention there are contemporary reports of Knights Templar in Jerusalem defending Muslim pilgrims from more zealous Christians from Europe who tried to harass them.

Oh. Forgive my ignorance.

In school I was taught that the Crusades were essentially Christians massacring those of other faiths, including Islam. Or, at least that was what stuck with me from the teachings. I guess I was referring to old knights of the crusades in the original post?

Oh no no no no no.

Remember, the Christians only "won" the 1st.  The 2nd and 3rd the tides really turned, and then they just started killing each other off much to the head-scratching of the Seljuks. Fuck, half of the crusades never even made it to the Holy Land because of squabbling and really bad planning. The Nile Delta? REALLY?

I can recommend some books if you like. Education on the Crusades in the west is certainly lackluster and biased until you get into college-level courses.

If you could, I'd be interested. I only really know about the first and the shennagins building up to it. Planning wasn't exactly a strong suit of the period when dealing with the region. I'm pretty sure a few castles were lost because crusaders didn't realise they may need water supplies. In the desert.

They were not well thought-out at all. Think of it as a 200 year clusterfuck.

2 of the best authors on the subject are Sir Steven Runciman, and Thomas Madden. Madden takes a more conservative approach, and can be a bit more pro-Christian historiographically, but he's an excellent writer and his citations are exceptionally thorough. Madden did a lot of work on the 4th Crusade with Queller, and some of the best primary source material comes from the Fourth, ONLY because it was Christian-against-Christian. It gives a good idea of how badly organized they were.

Madden also wrote a decent monograph called "The New Concise History of the Crusades" as a survey of the period, again, more conservative, but you need different points of view.

Runciman, RIP the glorious bastard, was a Byzantinist, but he did a lot of work on the 1st Crusade worth reading, and I think he released a survey just called "The Crusades." We lost him a few decades ago, but his research is still pretty relevant. He's a solid middle ground historian.

For a more liberal point of view, I recommend Jill Claster, and "Sacred Violence." Another monograph.

For more advanced reading, check out Tyerman's, "The Debate on the Crusades" which is a historiographical piece, and boring AF if you aren't used to reading history in meta. (You dawg, I heard you like the Crusades, so I wrote about what other people wrote about the Crusades so you can read the Crusades as other people wrote about them how I wrote it.)

As far as primary sources go, two of the top Frankish sources from the 4th are Robert of Clari (foot soldier POV) And Geoffrey de Villehardouin (commander.) The snarky Byzantine rebuttal is care of Niketas Choniates, who hated the Latins with a burning passion, and is generally hilarious about it at times.

For the 1st, there's a lot: Orderic Vitalis is good from the Normans, Anna Komnene from the Byzantines, there's also Raymond d'Aguilers and William of Tyre. Fordham's Internet History Sourcebook will give you hours of reading, free of charge. If you can find it, get Matthew of Edessa for the 2nd Crusade. It's a rare Armenian point of view that is pretty intense, and discusses the devastation wrought by the Orthodox Byzantines against the Monophysite Armenians.

Let me know what else you want, and I can dig on my shelves.

-Suu
Who never did finish composing Freddy Barbarossa: The Opera.

[Cain]

Runciman's also, in addition to everything else, a fairly entertaining and good writer.

I have his history of the First Crusade somewhere...

In regards to the project, not sure yet.  Brainstorming some ideas, but nothing solid yet.  But I have time.  A couple of months, in fact.

[Junkenstein]

Thanks! Copied, pasted and stashed for later reference.

ETA - Was just looking at building up the reading lists again, no specific preferences so I'll just go for whatever is first accessible on this list and work from that.

[Suu]

Niketas Choniates also confirms women in armor. In fact, there are several sources that confirm women combattants during the 2nd/3rd/4th Crusades. Eleanor of Aquitaine did not fight, but was a strategist and had a decent understanding of battlefield mechanics. Unlike her sniveling French husband at the time.

[Junkenstein]

Had battlefield understanding reached "carry weapons" yet? I seem to remember the people's crusades getting into fights and always getting massacred due everyone being too poor to afford weapons/armour/food.

[POFP]

And this is where I mention there are contemporary reports of Knights Templar in Jerusalem defending Muslim pilgrims from more zealous Christians from Europe who tried to harass them.

Oh. Forgive my ignorance.

In school I was taught that the Crusades were essentially Christians massacring those of other faiths, including Islam. Or, at least that was what stuck with me from the teachings. I guess I was referring to old knights of the crusades in the original post?

Not strictly true. The Crusades also had a whole bunch of Christians massacaring christian towns for plunder and giggles. Have a look at "The peoples crusade" that preceeded the main event and laugh at one of the first fullblown  shitshows of history. Peter the Hermit was a clown of the first order.

Aha, I stand corrected.



On a slightly related note to the Knights Templar, is it the whole organization that does silly rituals? Or is that just microcosms like DeMolay? Or all of Masonry? (I somewhat remember it being noted that the current Knights Templar was not directly connected to the medieval Knights Templar.)

I was mentioning it mostly because I find counterjihadist Templar fetishists pretty sad.  The Templars, as an order, understood Muslim politics better than most European leaders, let alone most of their citizens, and held a certain level of respect for them.

Other groups and orders, of course, disagreed, and did indeed slaughter and, in one case, possibly eat them.  Still pretty funny though.

Also, none of the modern Templar orders actually descend from the Templars.  It's all made up

Ahh, ok. That's actually pretty interesting.

That's what I thought. I just wondered if all the Masonic clubs were Glorified LARPers like the DeMolay people apparently are. I've been told that Masons are super ritualistic, and I've been told that they're not like that at all and that that was mainly Templars and DeMolay. And I don't know who to believe. Although, only one person was actually ever involved. But they also killed cats as a kid and blamed it on their brother. So, I don't know what all I can trust from that person.

And this is where I mention there are contemporary reports of Knights Templar in Jerusalem defending Muslim pilgrims from more zealous Christians from Europe who tried to harass them.

Oh. Forgive my ignorance.

In school I was taught that the Crusades were essentially Christians massacring those of other faiths, including Islam. Or, at least that was what stuck with me from the teachings. I guess I was referring to old knights of the crusades in the original post?

Oh no no no no no.

Remember, the Christians only "won" the 1st.  The 2nd and 3rd the tides really turned, and then they just started killing each other off much to the head-scratching of the Seljuks. Fuck, half of the crusades never even made it to the Holy Land because of squabbling and really bad planning. The Nile Delta? REALLY?

I can recommend some books if you like. Education on the Crusades in the west is certainly lackluster and biased until you get into college-level courses.

Yes please, for when I have the time to read. Thank you!

Remember: This is America, we don't give a fuck.

On the contrary, we tend to give more fucks than Europe does in some groups, but the Ren fair crowd certainly has become lackluster since the people with any fucking talent went into actual living history groups, and then we let mediocre cosplayers get involved when they were shunned out of the convention circuit for being shitty.

We have armored combat teams that go to Europe and beat the Euro teams on their own turf. It only took us getting the floor mopped with us a couple of years, though. But they stuck with it.

Wtf, really? I had no idea.

[Suu]

Had battlefield understanding reached "carry weapons" yet? I seem to remember the people's crusades getting into fights and always getting massacred due everyone being too poor to afford weapons/armour/food.

Depends. Remember there was no such thing as a standing army or munitions grade weapons until the later Medieval period, so not until the 13th/14th centuries, when lessons had been learned because of the Crusading period. The majority of men (and for that matter, women) that went to fight were nobles who could afford the armor and weapons. And I'm talking 1st born/2nd born, not the 5th born who was probably going to get nothing anyway.  When you read about things such as "People's Crusade" or "Peasants Crusade", those were nobodies who were trying to gain spiritual benefits because they had nothing else. The organized marches on Jerusalem were nobility.

Plenary indulgence certainly had a strong pull. Fucking Catholicism. The Orthodox Sees did not believe in indulgences, and still don't. This caused a lot of fucking problems when the Byzantines got involved. They just wanted territory back, fuck the Bishop of Rome. Alexios and Manuel did not give two shits, which is why the Latins did not give two shits when the Pope granted them reluctant permission to sack Constantinople "for God," even though they were misled by usurpers.