Synopses & Reviews
While focusing on the relationship between the papacy and the 14th-century crusades, this study also illuminates other fields of activity in Avignon, such as papal taxation and interaction with Byzantium. Using recent research, Housley covers all areas where crusading occurred--including the eastern Mediterranean, Spain, eastern Europe, and Italy--and analyzes the Curia's approach to related issues such as peacemaking between warring Christian powers, the work of Military Orders, and western attempts to maintain a trade embargo on Mamluk, Egypt. Placing the papal policies of Avignon firmly in context, the author demonstrates that the period witnessed the relentless erosion of papal control over the crusades.
Review
"A definitive account of the role of the Avignon Papacy in the crusading movement of the fourteenth century....An exemplary work of scholarship."--Church History
"Should not be missed....The subject is almost unbelievably complicated. It demands and receives a lucid, flexible style which manages to avoid the prosaic and obvious while threading its way through a myriad of detail....[An] excellent book."--Speculum
"Well written and extremely well documented...A work of wider interest than its title would suggest."--The Historian
"This study gives a good and detailed account of different aspects of the late-medieval Church and the world in which it worked."--Theological Studies