Jerusalem in the North

Denmark and the Baltic Crusades, 1100-1522

By (author) Ane Bysted By (author) Kurt Villads Jensen By (author) Carsten Selch Jensen By (author) John Lind

Book cover: Jerusalem in the North

Extent: 407, 407 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Medieval Studies

Series: Outremer. Studies in the Crusades and the Latin East

Series volume number: 1

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(June 2012)

ISBN: 9782503523255

Price: $113.00

On back order

‘God wills it, God wills it!’ – this was the response to the sermon of Pope Urban II at Clermont in 1095, in which he exhorted his audience to take the cross and liberate Jerusalem. And his words spread, even to the remotest islands in the north of Christendom. For the first time since the mid-nineteenth century, historians have investigated Latin, Danish, German, and Russian source materials about the Danish Crusades in the Baltic region. This team of four Danish medievalists describe how the idea of crusading reached the North and how Scandinavia became involved in the Western European crusading movement. Crusading ideology inspired Danish wars for hundreds of years against the Wends, Prussians, Lithuanians, Estonians and other pagan peoples along the coasts of the Baltic Sea so that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Denmark became the dominant crusading power in the region: a Jerusalem in the North. Indeed, crusading remained an important political reality in Denmark until the Lutheran Reformation in the early seventeenth century. Ane L. Bysted holds a Ph.D. from the University of Southern Denmark with a dissertation on the development of the crusade indulgence, and has written on crusade theology and preaching. Carsten Selch Jensen is Associate Professor in Church History at the University of Copenhagen. Has written on crusading history, especially in the Baltic Region as well as on holy and just war in the Middle Ages. Kurt Villads Jensen is Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Southern Denmark and chair of the Medieval Centre. He has written on Christian mission and crusades, especially in the Baltic region and Iberia.John H. Lind has written extensively on the Baltic crusades and on relations between Scandinavia, Finland and Russia from the Viking Age up to modern times.

  • By (author) Ane Bysted
  • By (author) Kurt Villads Jensen
  • By (author) Carsten Selch Jensen
  • By (author) John Lind