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Historical person
c. 1035–1099
Urban II was pope from 1088 to 1099 and issued the appeal at Clermont that initiated the First Crusade.
Urban sought to strengthen papal leadership during the Investiture Controversy and responded to Byzantine requests for military aid. At Clermont in November 1095 he called western Christians to assist eastern Christians and liberate Jerusalem, offering spiritual privileges to participants.
Urban’s call supplies the political and religious origin of Michael Jecks’s Holy Wars series. Pilgrim’s War concentrates on the varied ordinary people who act on crusading preaching rather than on the pope himself, showing how an elite appeal was transformed into a mass journey.
Series
The Holy Wars series follows a mixed company of pilgrims who leave France after the crusading preaching of 1096. Odo treats the expedition as proof of his religious authority, while his brother Fulk, Sybille, Jeanne and Guillemette confront the journey for different reasons, including duty, escape, survival and…
All books in this series
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
