Jihād and crusade: Byzantine positions towards the notions of 'holy war'

Abstract

The current study aims to re-approach the issue of religious warfare in Byzantium by exploring Byzantine attitudes towards the conception of crusade in the period 1096-1204. The study aims to analyse Byzantine positions towards the idea of divinely ordained and spiritually meritorious warfare, based on a comparison of Byzantine reactions to the Muslim concept of Jihād with Byzantine reactions to the western Christian concept of crusade. The main part of the paper focuses on the exploration of Byzantine attitudes towards the two core ideas that made crusade a notion of 'holy war', the ideas of deus vult and remissio peccatorum.