The Avignon Papacy and the Crusades, 1305-1378 [Hardcover]

While focusing on the relationship between the papacy and the 14th-century crusades, this study also illuminates other fields of activity in Avignon, such as papal taxation and interaction with Byzantium. Using recent research, Housley covers all areas where crusading occurred--including the eastern Mediterranean, Spain, eastern Europe, and Italy--and analyzes the Curia's approach to related issues such as peacemaking between warring Christian powers, the work of Military Orders, and western attempts to maintain a trade embargo on Mamluk, Egypt. Placing the papal policies of Avignon firmly in context, the author demonstrates that the period witnessed the relentless erosion of papal control over the crusades.

A definitive account of the role of the Avignon Papacy in the crusading movement of the fourteenth century....An exemplary work of scholarship. --Church History

Should not be missed....The subject is almost unbelievably complicated. It demands and receives a lucid, flexible style which manages to avoid the prosaic and obvious while threading its way through a myriad of detail....[An] excellent book. --Speculum

Well written and extremely well documented....A work of wider interest than its title would suggest. --The Historian

This study gives a good and detailed account of different aspects of the late-medieval Church and the world in which it worked. --Theological Studies