The Medieval Roots of Warhammer 40,000’s Endless Crusade
Paper by Rory MacLellan
Given at the Warhammer Conference on September 27, 2024
Abstract: The Imperium of Warhammer 40,000 is constantly at war, waging an endless series of military campaigns, the largest of which are known as crusades. From the Great Crusade ten thousand years earlier, to the Indomitus Crusade of the setting’s ‘present day’, these crusades can be directed against any and all foes across the galaxy. Some groups within the Imperium take this even further, like the Black Templars Chapter of Space Marines who have been fighting an endless crusade since their foundation. Fans of the game and its setting could think that this depiction of crusading was unique to Warhammer 40,000, endless holy wars a fitting addition to the game’s fanatical and grimdark future, but this wide-ranging and constant crusading has a real historical basis in the medieval crusade movement.
Popular views of the crusades still interpret these wars as being aimed primarily at the Holy Land and largely ending in 1291, when the last stronghold in Palestine fell. But crusade scholars have long since expanded the scope of the movement to take in the Christian holy wars fought against Muslims in Spain and North Africa, pagans in the Baltic, and heretics within Western Europe, and shifting the end of crusading well into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Christians began to deploy crusade rhetoric against all enemies, including their co-religionists, and some even invented ‘infidels’ that supposedly surrounded them on all sides.
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This paper will examine the historical roots of Warhammer 40,000’s Endless Crusades, how they reflect the Pluralist School of crusade historiography’s expansive definition of crusading, and how the paranoia and fervour shaping these fictional wars is not so different from that of the real-world crusade movement.
Rory MacLellan is a Cataloguer and Manuscript Researcher at the British Library. You can learn more about Rory’s research on the crusades through his Academia.edu page or follow him on X/Twitter @RFMacLellan
The Medieval Roots of Warhammer 40,000’s Endless Crusade
Paper by Rory MacLellan
Given at the Warhammer Conference on September 27, 2024
Abstract: The Imperium of Warhammer 40,000 is constantly at war, waging an endless series of military campaigns, the largest of which are known as crusades. From the Great Crusade ten thousand years earlier, to the Indomitus Crusade of the setting’s ‘present day’, these crusades can be directed against any and all foes across the galaxy. Some groups within the Imperium take this even further, like the Black Templars Chapter of Space Marines who have been fighting an endless crusade since their foundation. Fans of the game and its setting could think that this depiction of crusading was unique to Warhammer 40,000, endless holy wars a fitting addition to the game’s fanatical and grimdark future, but this wide-ranging and constant crusading has a real historical basis in the medieval crusade movement.
Popular views of the crusades still interpret these wars as being aimed primarily at the Holy Land and largely ending in 1291, when the last stronghold in Palestine fell. But crusade scholars have long since expanded the scope of the movement to take in the Christian holy wars fought against Muslims in Spain and North Africa, pagans in the Baltic, and heretics within Western Europe, and shifting the end of crusading well into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Christians began to deploy crusade rhetoric against all enemies, including their co-religionists, and some even invented ‘infidels’ that supposedly surrounded them on all sides.
This paper will examine the historical roots of Warhammer 40,000’s Endless Crusades, how they reflect the Pluralist School of crusade historiography’s expansive definition of crusading, and how the paranoia and fervour shaping these fictional wars is not so different from that of the real-world crusade movement.
Rory MacLellan is a Cataloguer and Manuscript Researcher at the British Library. You can learn more about Rory’s research on the crusades through his Academia.edu page or follow him on X/Twitter @RFMacLellan
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