Abstract: Contemporary critics and modern historians have both faulted the Albigensian Crusade, directed against heretics in the south of France, for weakening attempts to recover Jerusalem for Christendom in the early thirteenth century. This essay explores the competition between the Albigensian and Fifth Crusades. Placing these crusades alongside each other, this essay will examine the conversation between them. It is often charged that the armed and eventually royal effort against the Albigensian heretics drained French crusaders and resources from P...
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