In July 1456, a massive Turkish army settled in before Belgrade, an ancient city at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. The army’s leader was the twenty-four-year-old Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, "the Conqueror," who sought to take one of the most strategically important fortifications in southeastern Europe. Three weeks later, Mehmed’s army was driven from Belgrade by a Hungarian warlord and his army, along with a ragtag force of ill-equipped crusaders.In The Crusade of...

This book surveys the full panorama of ten centuries of Christian monastic life. It moves from the deserts of Egypt and the Frankish monasteries of early medieval Europe to the religious ruptures of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the reforms of the later Middle Ages. Throughout that story the book balances a rich sense of detail with a broader synthetic view. It presents the history of religious life and its orders as a complex braid woven from multiple strands: individual and comm...