Crusanding; Middle Ages; Crusader Movement

The conference took a comparative look at the phenomena of medieval crusades, their historical concepts, their course, and their social and regional range and contributed a new accentuation of the comprehension of the crusader movement to regionally-focussed research in this area. The following interests and approaches were taken into consideration here: Which military campaigns were propagated as crusades in the peripheries of the Christian West? What efforts were made to gain recognition for them as crusades and what effects did these have? Which values did the crusader movement have for the societies at the fines christianitatis? What role did the cruciatae have for the strengthening of an all-Western sense of togetherness and solidarity, and what role did they have for creation of a crusader and frontier identity? How, in concrete terms, was the crusade rhetoric reflected in the culture, writings and language of the appropriate countries? Further research desiderata, which have not yet been comparatively contrasted, are the interdependencies, parallels as well as differences between the crusades in the peripheries of Latin Christianity.