Reviewed by: Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 ed. by Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters, and James M. Powell Chris Jones Bird, Jessalynn, Edward Peters, and James M. Powell, eds, Crusade and Christendom: Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291(Middle Ages), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014; paperback; pp. xxii, 512; 6 maps; R.R.P. US $34.95, £23.00; ISBN 9780812223132. In July 1250, a group of crusaders on their way to the Holy Land found themselves before the courts of Messina. Acting on behalf of over four hundred would-be pilgrims, Terric Theotonicus, Peter de Latigniaco, John de Ala, and Richard Anglicus successfully challenged the masters of the ship Saint Vincent who had refused to convey them any further following news of the fall of the city of Damietta. Ruling against an extremely narrow interpretation of their contract, the judge awarded costs and free passage to all the plaintiffs. The case has much to tell us. We learn, in particular, about the composition of a thirteenth-century crusade contingent, including the fact that more than 9 per cent of the commoners sailing with the Saint Vincent were women (p. 432). The ruling is just one of the many fascinating documents that appear newly translated in Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters, and James Powell's collection. 'Intended for the undergraduate', this volume is a sourcebook for crusading in the thirteenth century that, as the dust jacket puts it, seeks to illustrate 'how the crusades became crucial for defining and promoting the very concept and boundaries of Latin Christendom'. It is a much-expanded version of Edward Peters's Christian Society and the Crusades, 1198–1229 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971). With the exception of one relatively short thematic section, 'Living and Dying on Crusade' (pp. 428–47), in which the above court case appears, the volume adopts a straightforward chronological structure with a strong focus on papal documents and excerpts from chronicles. The advantage of such an approach is that it facilitates charting the evolution of papal crusading legislation across a key century. Each of the ten sections comes with a valuable contextual introduction, an up-to-date survey of the relevant English language historiography and available texts in translation, introductions to the individual sources, and useful notes that will assist those bemused by some of the more technical vocabulary (e.g., p. 2,n. 4). The editorial policy is to make translations 'as readable as possible' (p.xxii), a goal which is generally achieved. While the editors deliberately exclude the Baltic and limit discussion of Iberia, if the collection has a significant weakness it is that, even with five hundred pages, it struggles to do justice to all the topics it covers. In some instances, such as the Children's Crusade, where all the documents are [End Page 202] newly translated, two directly from manuscripts, a good balance of varied perspectives and depth is achieved. However, in other cases, such as the 1251 'crusade' of the Pastoureaux, readers will need to turn to other collections for satisfactory coverage (in this case, to Peter Jackson's The Seventh Crusade, 1244–1254: Sources and Documents (Ashgate, 2007)). The inclusion of additional material would have brought a greater sense of equilibrium to several parts of the volume. The section 'The Italian Crusades, 1241–1268', for example, relies on the chronicles of Salimbene and Pedro III of Aragon for Charles d'Anjou's conquest of the Regno; new translations of Andrew of Hungary, Primat, or Guillaume de Nangis's chronicles would have offered valuable additional perspectives. In some sections, most notably those dealing with the Fourth Crusade and the Albigensian Crusade, the coverage is, on the other hand, wholly inadequate. It is difficult to see, in particular, how lengthy extracts from Roger of Wendover and Caesarius of Heisterbach provide sufficient material for students to engage with modern historiographical debate and to explore events in the early thirteenth-century Languedoc on anything beyond a superficial level. A more specific problem lies in the sources used for some of the translations. The material for the Fourth...