Thursday 29 December 2016

cowboys and indians: historiography

The brilliant host of the History of the Crusades podcast, Sharyn Eastaugh, has just finished the last instalment of her current series on the Crusade against the Cathars with a fascinating episode on the legacy of the Cathars, which has proven just as engrossing as learning about the adventuring in the Holy Land.
It’s really incredible how she as the presenter was able to present this closing chapter of the narrative with great but intriguing brevity—including the scholar and reluctant Nazi Otto Rahn who first sold the world the idea that the Albigensian campaign to the secrets of the Holy Grail in the early 1930s—believing that transposing the Parzival legend to Occitan locations would unravel the mystery. True to her commitment, however, to address the history of the Crusades and not just produce a podcast on some of the Crusades, this excitingly won’t be the last of the podcast, with Ms Eastaugh launching in the coming months on the Baltic Crusades between the Teutonic Knights and the pagan Finns, Poles and Saxons.