Book review: God’s Wolf The Life of the Most Notorious of All Crusaders: Reynard de Chatillon by Jeffrey Lee

Reynald de Chatillon was a Crusader whose name “lives in infamy in the bestiary of Islam”, a man relegated by historians “to the lower levels of hell”. Jeffrey Lee has written a new biography of him. Expect blood and perfidy.

In some respects, Lee seems to stick with received wisdom about the period, such as the assumption that Europe was mired in a backward civilization relative to the Arab world.However, he definitely has a revisionist spring in his step as well.

This isn’t to say that he tries to hide his subject’s violent ways (an impossibility, in any case). One of Reynald’s first acts as Prince of Antioch was to deal brutally with the Patriarch Aimery who was undermining him at every turn: the ageing churchman was beaten and then chained to the top of a tower in the blazing sun.