| Summary: | <p>During the late 1230s, the Mediterranean saw crusades launched across its full breadth. From Muslim Valencia in the West, through Frankish Greece to the Holy Land, the Mediterranean saw redemptive war waged by Latin Christendom upon its neighbours, whether those neighbours be Muslims, as in Iberian or the Levant, or schismatics and heretics, as in the Balkans. Despite the success all three of these campaigns attained, they are often overlooked by crusade historians, perhaps due to the comparatively small sizes of the Greek and Outremer campaigns. This thesis contends all three campaigns warrant further investigation, both in order to reveal more about the campaigns themselves, and as exemplars from which to ground points of general resonance about crusading history. In undertaking this investigation, this thesis takes a broad approach to the expeditions using a wide range of sources, both chronicle and documentary, both Eastern and Western.</p>
<p>Tracing the expeditions thus from their inception in 1233 until their conclusion in 1241 achieves several distinct things. For one, given the special status of these three expeditions within the plethora of crusades called by Pope Gregory IX and the overlap in recruitment and participation witnessed between the three crusades, the connectivity between them is revealed. These were not simply coincidentally simultaneous events, but three equal parts of the same movement. That is why when approaching events, this thesis proposes the title “Triple Crusade”, replacing the heading of “Barons’ Crusade”. Secondly, taking a broad approach that includes oversight of all three campaigns allows fresh analysis of their preaching, financing and recruitment drives, advancing current knowledge on the subjects both in a specific and a general sense. Thirdly, taking a broad approach shows the actual expeditions took place within a much wider world than historians have previously allowed, with the influence of non-Latin agents key.</p>
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