The Knight, the Cross, and the SongThe Knight, the Cross, and the Song offers a new perspective on the driving forces of crusading in the period 1100 1400. Although religious devotion has long been identified as the primary motivation of those who took the cross, Stefan Vander Elst argues that it was by no means the only focus of the texts written to convince the warriors of Western Christianity to participate in the holy war. Vander Elst examines how, across three centuries,