A History of the Crusades

by Jonathan Riley-Smith

  If crusade was a moving target across time and space in terms of whom it came to be applied against and where, then equally, considered as an institution, it was so with regard to content, substance, and apparatus. This can be seen very clearly in the case of crusaders’ spiritual and temporal privileges, but a similar broad evolutionary pattern is to be seen, for example, in the way in which crusades were promoted and preached, and how they were financed and organized. By the end of this period, crusading had become an elaborate and complex business, ‘the business of the cross’ as it was described at the time. Some key aspects of this are considered below.

  Promotion and Preaching

  The core of all crusade promotion consisted of papal proclamation of the expedition in question since popes alone possessed the requisite authority to declare a crusade and offer the spiritual and material privileges enjoyed by crusaders. But proclamation alone was rarely sufficient to move men and women to take the cross. Additional measures were needed. According to one account of the Council of Clermont, Urban II instructed the assembled prelates to announce what he had said throughout the churches of their dioceses and to preach the cross. He himself proclaimed the crusade in the course of his itinerary around France, and he also commissioned specific agents to preach in particular localities. The evidence does not suggest that Urban’s hopes were fully realized in practice, however, not least because prelates lacked the means to publicize the crusade call easily and automatically throughout their dioceses: ecclesiastical administrative structures were still primitive, and the lack of a formal authenticated crusade bull scarcely helped matters. Preaching, too, was in its infancy, an unfamiliar act for most clergy. But the First Crusade provided a model, however rudimentary, which would be progressively elaborated and extended upon in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the attempt to maximize the impact of the crusade call, with dissemination of papal proclamations and local preaching remaining the fundamental components. These will be examined in turn.

  No formal bull launched the First Crusade. In this it is unusual, since most of the others were proclaimed by crusade encyclical, the basic form of which was finally established by Quantum praedecessores (1145) for the Second Crusade: an initial narrative section explaining why a crusade is necessary, an exhortation to take the cross, and a listing of crusader privileges. From the letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, commissioned to preach the crusade, and other evidence, it is plain that the bull was to be publicized, but in practice it seems that dissemination was haphazard. It was only in Alexander III’s pontificate that the attempt was first made to disseminate crusade bulls systematically at local level, crucially through direct mandate to local prelates. In 1181, in particular, the pope instructed all prelates to ensure that his crusade bull Cor nostrum was published in all churches and to announce crusader privileges to the faithful. This was probably achieved by the production of transcripts of the letter in local episcopal chanceries, which were then distributed to the individual churches of the diocese in question. This, at any rate, became the routine procedure in the thirteenth century, and in a few instances we can trace exactly the sequence of administrative measures leading from the papal curia to provincial archbishops, thence to their suffragan bishops, and so on down the hierarchy to parish priest level. The whole process is indicative both of the increasing sophistication of the Church’s administrative structures (possible with the greater application of literacy to the art of government) and also of the progressive establishment of a centralized Church under papal monarchy. Local prelates were now being mandated to act in the matter of the crusade, as in other business, in a much more streamlined and sure way than was possible in 1095. This is equally true with regard to crusade preaching.

  Two types of preaching may be identified according to occasion, audience, and purpose. The first was preaching before assemblies of Church or State, the Council of Clermont being the prototype. Later examples include Innocent III’s preaching at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and that of Innocent IV and Gregory X to the assembled dignitaries at the First and Second Councils of Lyons (1245, 1274). Before secular assemblies, two famous examples are the preaching of St Bernard before Louis VII and the magnates of France at Vézelay in 1146, and his dramatic preaching at Conrad III of Germany’s Christmas court the same year. Indeed, it became entirely normal for crusade preachers to utilize such occasions, as well as more recreational gatherings like tournaments, in an attempt to secure the vows of important men in attendance, to launch promotional campaigns more broadly, and, frequently from the Second Crusade, to make public a prince’s assumption of the cross. Many were highly stage-managed affairs planned weeks or months in advance with little left to chance. The parlement held in Paris in March 1267 is a good example. There, Louis IX took his second crusade vow, followed immediately by three of his sons and others close to him, his relics of the Passion deliberately on public display for the occasion: he had secretly informed the pope of his intentions the previous September.

  Preaching of this type was aimed at the very highest in society and is to be contrasted with the more humdrum carried out in the field. It is here that we see the real progress made after Clermont. Until the late twelfth century, all the signs indicate that local preaching was haphazard and unsystematic, lacking central co-ordination. The great leap forward came under Innocent III. Already in 1198, for the Fourth Crusade, a new general executive office for the business of the cross had been established, one or more executors being appointed to specific provinces of the Church for promotional and other purposes. With them operated freelance preachers such as the famous Fulk of Neuilly. In 1213, for the Fifth Crusade, a more elaborate structure was introduced. For almost every province an executive board was established, with legatine powers in the matter of the crusade, to implement promotional policy. Answerable to them were delegates appointed to individual dioceses and archdeaconries within the province in question. And, for the first time, guidelines were laid down as to how the cross should be preached. This universal structure was not used again though it set the pattern for later promotional campaigns in some areas, for example England. Instead, Innocent’s successors were more pragmatic and ad hoc in their approach, dictated partly by political circumstances in the West. But there is no doubt that, after his pontificate, local promotion was altogether more coherent and intensive than it had been previously.

  The second major development concerned preaching personnel. Any ecclesiastic, cleric or monk, might be called upon to preach the cross, although it seems that the ordinary parish clergy rarely did so. This was the case in the twelfth century, and still so in the thirteenth, but with two important differences. First, the preaching of papal legates, prelates, and other dignitaries tended to become more limited after the Fifth Crusade: to those stage-managed occasions considered previously, and to the launching of promotional campaigns in individual provinces or dioceses. Increasingly, instead, more of the burden came to be taken up by the mendicant orders, the Franciscan and Dominican friars, once they became established throughout Christendom in the 1220s and 1230s. Thereafter, they bore the brunt of local preaching. They were admirably equipped for the task: they were professional preachers by virtue of their apostolic mission, preaching on a regular basis to the populace unlike the enclosed monks of traditional monasticism; they were well trained in the art of preaching; and with their houses spread throughout the West, they possessed a network of centres from which extensive local preaching could be conducted quite easily.

  After the Third Crusade, local preaching came to be closely planned in advance in the attempt to achieve maximum coverage, to utilize resources fully, and to avoid duplication of effort. On occasion, political problems arose to complicate matters, but preaching offensives were rarely haphazard. Individual agents were deputed to preach the cross at specific places or over particular areas. To do this systematically, planned itineraries were called for, the first well-documented tour of this type being that l
ed by Baldwin of Ford, archbishop of Canterbury, to Wales in 1188. Extensive tours like this tended to become rare in the thirteenth century, partly because of the reorganization brought about by Innocent III and partly because the area deputed to any one preacher came to be reduced as more personnel, notably the friars, were deployed on the ground. Typically, by the later thirteenth century, one friar would be responsible for preaching in only one or two archdeaconries, but even then he would need to follow an itinerary to ensure systematic coverage. His preaching was fundamentally concentrated on urban centres and, in rural areas, the larger vills. This was sensible given population concentrations and the finite number of preachers that were available. They went, inevitably, to places where a good turn-out could be expected. In their preaching they were assisted by the secular clergy, who were sent advance notice that the friar intended to preach on a particular day at a specified place. Ecclesiastical censure was threatened to compel both the parish clergy and their flocks to attend. If this was the stick, the carrot took the form of partial indulgence granted to those attending sermons. This was first made available by Innocent III. The number of days of remitted penance had risen to a maximum of one year and forty days by the end of the thirteenth century.

  The drive to intensify the local preaching effort was paralleled by developments in the art of crusade preaching itself. Most of the themes used by popes, bishops, and friars alike remained much the same from Clermont onwards, not surprisingly. But from the later twelfth century preaching evolved quite profoundly, particularly with a new emphasis on popular preaching. This was accompanied by a remarkable growth in the production of aids for preachers regularly addressing popular audiences: collections of model sermons, manuals of themes, collections of exempla, and so forth. Crusade preaching specifically was deeply conditioned by this development, with the production of model crusade sermons, for example, and handbooks designed to help the preacher in his task. The most popular was that compiled c .1266–8 by the Dominican Humbert of Romans, an exhaustive survey which collected into one compact work those materials and arguments that he considered, as a former crusade preacher himself, to be most useful. Armed with these sorts of materials, thirteenth-century crusade preachers were far better equipped than their predecessors. In this respect, too, crusade promotion had become more professional.

  The result of the various developments outlined above was that by the later thirteenth century the Church had successfully elaborated the means to expose all parts of the West to the crusade call, through systematic publication of crusade bulls and the privileges they contained, and by the deployment on the ground of local preachers better qualified than before. Very few could have been ignorant of current crusading policy as a result. It is an achievement that underlines the sophistication reached by the thirteenth-century Church and which reflects the authority and power of papal monarchy. However, even at its height under Innocent III, the papacy never had things all its own way. For example, from 1095 onwards a series of freelance preachers, especially those of the millennial tendency, latched on to the crusade. The result was seen in the bands of poor on the First Crusade, or the so-called Children’s Crusade of 1212, or the Crusade of the Shepherds of 1251. Limitations to papal monarchy in practice can also be seen in the difficulties that popes faced in seeking to establish peace in the West, vital for successful crusade recruitment. For example, from the 1170s a succession of popes persistently sought to establish peace between the warring kings of England and France in the interests of the Latin East, but with little effect. They would crusade only as and when it suited them.

  Personnel and Recruitment

  According to one account of the Council of Clermont, Urban II actively sought to dissuade the elderly, the infirm, women, clerics, and monks from taking crusade vows, a stance confirmed by his surviving letters. He knew that effective aid for the Christians of the East would not come from non-combatants, whatever their zeal, but from the military classes of society. Warfare was for warriors, holy war was no exception, and other social groups should refrain from it. Besides, such people had prior obligations and responsibilities that disqualified them from crusading. For example, if a priest were to go on the crusade, the cure of his parishioners’ souls might be endangered, whilst monks were bound by their vows to spiritual not temporal warfare on behalf of all, leaving aside the fact that churchmen were forbidden to bear arms. Twelfth-century popes maintained this attitude, but unsuccessfully. Large numbers of non-combatants took the cross and departed, especially on crusades to the Holy Land, thereby causing immense problems. In particular, they placed intolerable strains on available food supplies, exacerbating, if not causing, the famine situations that developed on the march to the East and the consequent staggering rise in prices of foodstuffs. They also posed a major problem for discipline and organization, and contributed not a little to the developing friction with the Byzantines, the crusaders’ supposed allies, all the time consuming resources which would otherwise have been available to others more useful than themselves.

  This is all starkly clear from eyewitness accounts of the First and Second Crusades, and the experience prompted the monarchs who led the Third Crusade to take steps to prevent the participation of a host of non-combatants. But neither they nor later crusade leaders who followed suit were entirely successful; crusader privileges and the lure of the Holy Places were so potent that crusading, at least to the Latin East, retained its considerable popular appeal. This is another indication of the practical limits to papal power, further impressed upon us when we allow for the sharp shift in papal policy concerning crusade vows that occurred under Innocent III.

  Throughout the twelfth century, popes were generally strict concerning the personal fulfilment of vows, permitting deferment, commutation, or redemption only in particular circumstances, such as the infirmity, illness, or poverty of the individual in question. Otherwise, under threat of ecclesiastical censure, the able-bodied were expected duly to fulfil their vows. In 1213, however, Innocent III enunciated a radical policy change in connection with recruitment to the Fifth Crusade. Appreciating the practical problems caused by the presence of large numbers of non-combatants on campaign, he ruled that anyone, excepting only monks, could now take the cross, but those vows might now be redeemed, deferred, or commuted as seemed appropriate. His successors sought to make good the implications of this in practice, and by the mid-thirteenth century a system of vow redemption for cash had been instituted, the essence of which was the raising of moneys in return for the crusader’s indulgence. Anyone could take the cross, regardless of his or her value on the battlefield, but the great majority were urged—even compelled—to redeem their vows. The cash raised then went to support those best qualified in the art of war. It was a development which, again, could only have occurred once the Church’s administration had reached a certain level of efficiency and intensity, and once, too, the volume of coin in general circulation had sufficiently expanded through the sustained growth of the European economy.

  Those best qualified to prosecute crusading warfare came, of course, from the military classes of the West: those of the degree of knighthood and above, the seigneurial class (in purely military terms, the heavy cavalry) and their tactical auxiliaries. These last included sergeants, mounted and foot, crossbowmen, siege engineers, and so forth. Some others, drawn from the nonmilitary strata of society, would be needed for specific purposes: for example, clerics to administer the sacraments and, being literate, to deal with administrative chores; or merchants, to keep the army supplied. But it seems clear that as time went on such individuals, along with surgeons, stable lads, and other ranks, tended to participate as members of a crusader lord’s household. Sailors, too, were obviously crucial when the campaign in question involved the transport of a force by sea. But the core of crusade armies in this period, to the East or elsewhere, was always the knights; it was around them, and to sustain them in the field, that other ranks were organized. It is also the case,
given contemporary economic, social, and political realities, that where those of the seigneurial class led, others followed, so some discussion of their recruitment to crusades is appropriate here.