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The Modern Scholar: God Wills It!: Understanding the Crusades
- Narrated by: Thomas F. Madden
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
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The Modern Scholar: God Wills It!: Understanding the Crusades
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Summary
For over 400 years, crusaders ("those signed by the cross"), out of Christian zeal, a declared love for their fellow man, and, in many cases, a simple desire for fortune, glory, and heavenly reward, marched to the Holy Land to battle both a real and perceived threat to their way of life and their religious beliefs. The story of the many crusades are filled with an unremitting passion to keep or return the home of Christianity to Christians. It is also filled with death, destruction, disorder, greed, avarice, and self-interest on all sides. Much of what occurred during the Crusades has come down to us today in the form of continued suspicion among religious ideologies - not only between Christians and Muslims, but also internally among Christian sects and, to some degree, among Muslim sects. There is certainly much to learn about our own history from a better understanding of the Crusades and what led so many to crusade.
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What listeners say about The Modern Scholar: God Wills It!: Understanding the Crusades
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Marcus
- 05-04-13
Excellent short history
As an introduction to the crusades this couldn't be better. Told in a series of lectures by the author, each is highly informative, and contain none of the self indulgent digressions you sometimes hear at university. The author has a good reading voice and clearly is on top of his subject. I will be trying more of this series.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Frank F
- 05-01-14
Nice bit of scholarship and teaching
The subject is obviously well understood and researched. The lecturer is good at making it clear what things (like motivation of some of the historical figures) we are not absolutely sure about and his presentation style was easy to settle into.
I listened to this going to work each day and found it easy to follow, interesting enough to keep listening, and easy to pick up again on the next commute without having lost the thread.
I also think it was nice that it didn't sell religious justification but also didn't hide from it, presenting motivations as social factors. In the end, I didn't find any villains nor did I find any heroes, just men trying to live as best they could given their training and environment. Can we judge them? Sure. Can we blame them? Maybe. Can we learn from them? Definitely.
The one thing I did take away, is that armies periodically do stupid things and the history of the Crusades, certainly prove this repeatedly. I definitely understand the motivations and history of the Crusades more clearly and might listen to it again sometime.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Olivier
- 22-02-13
Madden Rules !
God Wills It!: Understanding the Crusades, was my second set of lectures from Professor Madden (the first one being "Empire of Gold", the History of the Bizantine Empire).
As before, Professor Madden's lecture text does a splendid job of bringing to life a periof of history which everyone has heard about, but which very few people actually know, even superficially. If you like history and have ever wondered what the Crusades were REALLY all about, then these lectures are for you.
In addition, Professor Madden's delivery, which was a bit halting at times in the other set of lectures, is excellent in this one.
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