Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith (27 June 1938 – 13 September 2016) was a historian of the

Crusade The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...

s, and, between 1994 and 2005, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. He was a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mo ...

Early life

Riley-Smith was the eldest of four children born into a prosperous Yorkshire brewing family. His maternal grandfather (to whose memory he later dedicated his book ''What Were the Crusades?'') was the British Conservative Party MP, John Craik-Henderson (1890-1971). He attended

Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...

and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, where he took his BA (1960), MA (1964), PhD (1964), and LittD (2001).

Academic career

Riley-Smith taught at the

University of St Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...

(1964–1972),

Queens' College, Cambridge Queens' College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Queens' is one of the 16 "old colleges" of the university, and was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou. Its buildings span the R ...

(1972-1978), Royal Holloway College, London (1978–1994) as well as at Emmanuel (1994–2005). His many respected publications on the origins of the crusading movement and the motivations of the first crusaders have deeply influenced current historiography of the crusades: in an appreciative obituary, a senior colleague described Riley-Smith as "quite simply the leading historian of the crusades anywhere in the world". He was appointed a Knight of Grace and Devotion of the

Sovereign Military Order of Malta The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), officially the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, and commonly known as the Order of Malta or the Knights of Malta, is a Catholic lay religious ...

and a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem. Riley-Smith appeared in the documentary series ''

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...

'' (1995) as an historical authority. However, the series adopted the views of

Steven Runciman Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman (7 July 1903 – 1 November 2000), known as Steven Runciman, was an English historian best known for his three-volume '' A History of the Crusades'' (1951–54). His works had a profound impact on the popula ...

, which were not held by Riley-Smith. The producers then edited the taped interviews so that the historians seemed to agree with Runciman. Riley-Smith said of the producers that "they made me appear to say things that I do not believe!" In 2006, he delivered the Gifford Lectures on ''The Crusades and Christianity'' at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

Personal life

Riley-Smith was a convert to Catholicism. He married Louise Field, a portrait artist, in 1968. Their three children include the singer/songwriter Polly Paulusma. Jonathan Riley-Smith died on 13 September 2016.

Bibliography

*''The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050–1310'' (London, Macmillan, 1967, reprinted 2002) * * *''The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277'' (London, Macmillan, 1973, reprinted 2002) *''What Were the Crusades?'' (London, Macmillan, 1977, 2nd edition 1992, 3rd edition Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2002) *''The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274'', with Louise Riley-Smith (London, Edward Arnold, 1981) *''The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading'' (London and Philadelphia, Athlone/ University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986, paperback US 1990, UK 1993) *''The Crusades: A Short History'' (London and New Haven, Athlone/ Yale University Press, 1987, also in paperback, translated into French, Italian and Polish) *''The Atlas of the Crusades'' (editor) (London and New York, Times Books/ Facts on File, 1991, translated into German and French) *''The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades'', editor (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995, paperback 1997, now reissued as ''The Oxford History of the Crusades'', paperback, 1999, translated into Russian, German and Polish) *''Cyprus and the Crusades'', editor, with Nicholas Coureas) (Nicosia, Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and Cyprus Research Centre, 1995) *''Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer'', editor, with Benjamin Z. Kedar and Rudolf Hiestand (Aldershot, Variorum, 1997) *''The First Crusaders, 1095–1131'' (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, paperback 1998 and 2000) *''Hospitallers: The History of the Order of St. John'' (London, The Hambledon Press, 1999, also in paperback, translated into Russian) *''Al seguito delle Crociate Rome'' (Di Renzo: Dialoghi Uomo e Societΰ, 2000) *''Dei gesta per Francos: Etudes sur les croisades dιdiιes ΰ Jean Richard'', editor, with M. Balard and B.Z. Kedar (Aldershot (Ashgate), 2001) *''The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam'' (Columbia University Press, 2008) *''The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant 1070–1309'' (Basingstoke, 2012)

References

External links

Obituary
''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'', 22 September 2016 {{DEFAULTSORT:Riley-Smith, Jonathan 1938 births 2016 deaths English Christians English Roman Catholics Fellows of Queens' College, Cambridge English historians Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Bailiffs Grand Cross of the Order of St John Fellows of Emmanuel College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Historical Society Historians of the Crusades People educated at Eton College People from Harrogate Dixie Professors of Ecclesiastical History Converts to Roman Catholicism Place of death missing Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America