The enduring legacy of the Crusades


Luke Coppen, editor of the Catholic Herald, has a very useful column which he writes most days called "Morning Catholic must-reads" with links to interesting stories. (There is also a most helpful one-sentence explanation - it is irritating when people put in their blog "read this!!!" without telling me why I should.)

Today via Luke I found the article in Crisis Magazine by David Byrne on The Real Significance of the Crusades. It is a good brief explanation of how the Crusades and the Reconquista were instrumental in the intellectual flowering that took place in Europe in the high middle ages. Serious students of St Thomas will not find anything new, but it is a helpful synthetic presentation of the sort of link that is missed because of routine prejudice in the presentation of our history.

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