The origin of the idea of ​​the Crusade

The study of the Crusades all over the world begins with this book - the classic work of the famous German medievist Karl Erdman. It is one of those that completely transformed the intellectual landscape in their field. Starting with the examination of the phenomenon of the first crusade, Erdman, unlike his predecessors, changed the optics of his eyes, for the first time justifying the sacred war as a general historical problem, and campaigns to Jerusalem as its special case. The exceptional depth of the imagination and outstanding analytical abilities of the German researcher allowed him to make a real breakthrough: having scrupulously collecting and describing events, creating an almost complete map of the sources of the first crusade, that is, the actual template of all the crusades recorded in different corners of medieval Europe in the form of a sacred war.
How is the idea of ​​war, authorized by the Church and Higher Forces, in the bowels of the Christian culture of the West? What influence on this ideology does popular culture, power, state have? Crusades against pagans, heretics, religious officers, Saracens, and even against Byzantium, and other manifestations of the church war - are the milestones of the intellectual drama in which you have to plunge.
The author develops his theses on painstakingly selected medieval material, the processing of which is a masterpiece of historiographic research. All later works on sacreded violence in the widest context were based on this basis.
The works of Erdman, who died in the maids of the Second World War, were not previously translated into Russian. It is published in the translation of the famous domestic historian - D.G. Khrustalev - the author of a number of books, including the monograph "Northern Crusaders. Russia in the struggle for spheres of influence in the Eastern Baltic states of the XII-XIII centuries. " The book is equipped with an updated scientific apparatus and the comments of the translator