This DVD set goes into some excellent detail on each of the three crusades against Islam. We meet Richard III and Saladin, of course, but we also encounter the pious Duke Godfrey of Bouillon and his infamous brother, Baldwin. We see the siege of Jerusalem, and the carnage when the Crusaders finally took the city. We often hear first-hand accounts from people on both sides of the conflict. And it's pretty clear that the Crusades have impacted relations between Muslim nations and the West even after the secularization of the latter.

Finally, I get to Christianity: The Second Thousand Years. Christianity during and after the Crusades. We see the rise of the Pope leading up to the Crusades, as Pope Gregory VII's vision of the power of the Papacy is handed down to his successors. It's difficult for us to understand people marching across Europe at the urging of a clergyman, but that's what happened. That's the power the Pope had — since there was no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope could condemn you to Hell just through excommunication. With the rise of Papal interdiction, we see the possibility of entire nations damned to Hell because of their ruler's sins. And in the Crusades, the Pope offers the faithful absolution for their service.

And, of course, this power and it's subsequent abuses lead to an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther, and his Reformation. This DVD traces the development of Christianity through the rise of Evangelicalism, including the religious struggles with slavery. It also includes a concise treatment of the history of the Mormon church, which should interest Americans now especially. This second volume doesn't suffer from the chronological problems that the first did, but it is also necessarily a "big picture" presentation of Christian history. There are things I wish had been covered, and others that I wish had been covered in more depth, but the DVD doesn't lose anything by the absence of these small details.

In total, this DVD set is an outstanding overview of the events leading up to the Crusades, and how the Crusades impacted both Islam and Christianity. It provides a good overview of the history of both faiths, without being overly critical or sounding like a PR piece. Highly recommended to anyone who is trying to understand the conflict between Christianity and Islam.