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	William Chester Jordan
Dr. William Chester Jordan (b.1948) is the Director of the Princeton University Medieval Studies Program. He earned his PHD from Princeton in 1973 where he studied under the highly respected historian Dr. Joseph Strayer. Dr. Jordan has had a broad and varied career in medieval studies including scholarship not only on the crusades, but also English constitutional history, gender, economics, and disease. His most recent research is on Church-State relations in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. According to a 1997 article from the Princeton Weekly Bulletin,              Jordan's own interest in the Middle Ages was born when he was a student at Ripon College              in Ripon, Wisc. "It was a small college, and the books in our library tended to be old classics.              I read [Belgian historian Henri] Pirenne's Mohammed and Charlemagne (1937), a wonderful              book. It had such sweep and boldness. I thought I'd like to have a vocation in which one              might try to write something of that quality." (1) Dr. Jordan is active at various conferences and is known for his willingness to help students of medieval history whether they attend Princeton or elsewhere. While he has published many well received books, his best known work that focuses on the crusading era is his Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton University Press, 1980). This work is the most comprehensive secondary source account of the seventh crusade currently available. Dr. Jordan's scholarship on Louis IX has been widely cited in the works of numerous other medieval scholars, including Francis Gies, Malcolm Barber, and Robert Chazan. More recently, Dr. Jordan has published three articles on the crusades including, "Welfare and Warfare, vol. 2 of The Military Orders." In Church History, Vol. 69, March 1, 2000, "God, Humanity, and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives." In Church History, Vol. 70, March 1, 2001, and "An Ungodly War: the Sack of Constantinople and the Fourth Crusade" In Church History, Vol. 71, March 1, 2002. All three articles are available for purchase online through Amazon.com. Dr. Jordan's numerous awards include the Charles Homer Haskins medal from the Medieval Academy of America awarded annually for the outstanding book in medieval studies. The award was given for his work, The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 1996). William Chester Jordan Princeton University Faculty Page Medieval Studies Program Princeton University Aquinas, The Church, and the Plague: Professor William Jordan '73 Sheds Light on the Middle Ages Princeton Alumni Weekly Caroline Moseley Medievalist Jordan "really likes archives" Princeton Weekly Bulletin, March 31, 1997 Dr. Joseph Strayer- Crusades-Encyclopedia St. Louis IX- Crusades-Encyclopedia Fourth Crusade- Crusades-Encyclopedia Seventh-Crusade- Crusades-Encyclopedia (1) Caroline Moseley Medievalist Jordan "really likes archives" Princeton Weekly Bulletin, March 31, 1997 (c) Andrew Holt, June 2005-Permission is granted for electronic copying and distribution in print form for educational and personal use. No permission is granted for commercial use.