The Barons' Crusade

A Call to Arms and Its Consequences

Michael Lower

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780812202670
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

In December 1235, Pope Gregory IX altered the mission of a crusade he had begun to preach the year before. Instead of calling for Christian magnates to go on to fight the infidel in Jerusalem, he now urged them to combat the spread of Christian heresy in Latin Greece and to defend the Latin empire of Constantinople. The Barons' Crusade, as it was named by a fourteenth-century chronicler impressed by the great number of barons who participated, would last until 1241 and would represent in many ways the high point of papal efforts to make crusading a universal Christian undertaking. This book, the first full-length treatment of the Barons' Crusade, examines the call for holy war and its consequences in Hungary, France, England, Constantinople, and the Holy Land.In the end, Michael Lower reveals, the pope's call for unified action resulted in a range of locally determined initiatives and accommodations. In some places in Europe, the crusade unleashed violence against Jews that the pope had not sought; in others, it unleashed no violence at all. In the Levant, it even ended in peaceful negotiation between Christian and Muslim forces. Virtually everywhere, but in different ways, it altered the relations between Christians and non-Christians. By emphasizing comparative local history, The Barons' Crusade: A Call to Arms and Its Consequences brings into question the idea that crusading embodies the religious unity of medieval society and demonstrates how thoroughly crusading had been affected by the new strategic and political demands of the papacy.

1
The Preaching of the Holy Land Crusade: The Plan

During the fall of 1234 Pope Gregory IX turned his full attention to launching an expedition in aid of the Holy Land, devising a preaching campaign that was ambitious in scope and novel in conception. The campaign was an unprecedented attempt to transform crusading into a universal Christian activity. It tried for the first time to make taking the cross a general practice appropriate and desirable for all members of Christendom. What most distinguished the campaign was its appeal to a mass audience. Gregory’s preachers exhorted everyone to swear a crusade vow: women as well as men, the old as well as the young, the sick as well as the healthy, the poor as well as the rich. The idea was not to send the populus Christianus on the march. Gregory had no intention of allowing everyone who took the cross to serve in the crusade army. Instead those deemed unsuitable to participate in a military campaign would be made to redeem, or buy back, their vows for a cash payment, in return for the full indulgence of sins granted to those who went on the crusade in person. The money raised from these redemptions would help fund a force of expert fighters. What Gregory had in mind was a mass mobilization of Christian purses, not arms.

In the twelfth century, popes had taken a more straightforward approach to crusade recruitment. They encouraged men of military inclination to go on crusade and encouraged everyone else to remain at home.¹ Papal letters consequently stressed that prospective crusaders should seek ecclesiastical advice or approval before taking the cross.² It is not clear how many crusaders followed this advice, nor how many preachers used it as a basis to refuse the cross to someone who wished to receive it. Once sworn, though, the vow was strictly enforced. Only in rare cases, when an unforeseen impediment (debilitating illness, for example) made fulfillment of the vow impossible, could it be delayed, commuted to the performance of an equivalent service (such as crusading in Spain instead of Syria) or redeemed for a cash payment.³ Fundraising played no part in papal recruitment efforts at this time. Participants were expected to cover their own expenses, although by midcentury papal privileges were in place to help them do so.⁴ Preaching campaigns of the era focused primarily on recruiting crusaders, not generating funding for crusades.

But this approach to promoting crusades was not as successful as the popes would have liked. Papal admonitions did not prevent inexperienced fighters from setting out for the East. Large numbers of them took part in the Second and Third Crusades. When these expeditions failed, noncombatants received more than their fair share of the blame.⁵ Another problem with traditional crusade recruitment was that its “pay your own way” method of financing expeditions proved insufficient, since crusades, like most kinds of military activity, stretched the normal revenues of lords, magnates, and even monarchs to the limit. Kings, in fact, took the lead in searching out supplemental funding. Henry II of England and Philip Augustus of France, for example, levied the “Saladin Tithe” on their subjects for the Third Crusade.⁶ Eventually the papacy decided to act as well. For the Fourth Crusade Innocent III imposed a modest tax on ecclesiastical revenues.⁷ But the levy was unpopular and receipts from it came in slowly if at all.⁸ As it turned out, the Fourth Crusade suffered the gravest financial crisis yet. Having reached the bottom of its coffers before it set sail from Venice, the expedition never managed to make it to the Holy Land, let alone provide it with effective aid.

In the wake of more than half a century of unsuccessful crusades to the Holy Land, with none having failed quite as dramatically as the one he himself had launched, Innocent made a change in the way crusades were recruited. He announced the new measure in Quia maior, his crusade bull of 1213 for the Fifth Crusade:

Since it happens that aid to the Holy Land is much impeded or delayed if each must be examined prior to taking the cross as to his fitness and ability to fulfill the vow in person, we allow that anyone who wishes, except persons bound by religious profession, may take the cross, on the assumption that when dire necessity and or plain usefulness may so require, the vow may be commuted, redeemed, or postponed by apostolic command.⁹

With one stroke, the new policy provided a mechanism to both limit noncombatant participation and raise funds. Anyone who wished to swear a crusade vow might do so, regardless of aptitude for warfare; but the pope had exclusive authority to determine how best that votive obligation might be fulfilled: it could be executed as promised, delayed, commuted, or redeemed as he saw fit. It was the last of these powers over the vow that offered the greatest potential as an instrument of recruitment and fundraising. By redeeming vows en masse, Innocent could prevent incapable crusaders from swelling the ranks of the crusade army. At the same time, he could use the money they paid to buy back their vows to subsidize the practiced fighters he wanted for his expedition.

Despite the financial advantage of doing so, Innocent never exploited vow redemption to its full potential. It was, in fact, just one of many new methods he devised to channel enthusiasm for crusading into aid for the Holy Land. Quia maior and Ad liberandam, the decree for the crusade he issued at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, seem to offer every segment of Latin Christian society an appropriate way to contribute to the crusade.¹⁰ Clerics would pray and pay a tax: a twentieth of their income for three years. Innocent and his cardinals would pay a full tithe, while Innocent himself would contribute 30,000 pounds and a ship for the Roman crusaders. Maritime cities would also supply transport, while Christian merchants would refrain from trading in weapons, iron, or wood with their Muslim counterparts. Magnates unwilling to join the crusade themselves would send contingents at their expense, as would the great princes of the church and the elites of the cities. Those of lesser means could contribute alms to the crusade: chests were placed in churches to receive the offerings. Everybody would pray for the success of the crusade; Innocent composed liturgical rites for the purpose.¹¹

Certainly vow redemption had a place among these new techniques for supporting the crusade; but it was not a predominant one. Innocent may have called upon all Christians to contribute to the crusade in one fashion or another;¹² but he did not call upon all Christians to take the cross and redeem their vows. On the whole, as James Powell has shown, the recruitment campaign for the Fifth Crusade retained a traditional emphasis on facilitating the participation of the military elite.¹³ Innocent seems to have backed away from his new vow redemption policy, moreover, when it encountered criticism in northern France.¹⁴ There is no mention of it in Ad liberandam, which he issued just two years after announcing the new approach in Quia maior.¹⁵ Innocent died in 1216, before preparations for the Fifth Crusade were complete; but his successor Honorius III (1216–1227) followed Innocent’s plans for that expedition and over the course of his pontificate adhered to the Innocentian approach to crusade recruitment, emphasizing other methods of revenue gathering and not calling for vow redemption in his crusade bulls.¹⁶

Gregory, however, did not follow Honorius’s approach. In his time as a cardinal, Pope Gregory IX, then Ugolino of Ostia, had worked as a legate in Lombardy promoting the Fifth Crusade.¹⁷ Preaching his own Holy Land expedition, Gregory placed a greater emphasis on vow redemption than his mentor Innocent had, setting aside ecclesiastical taxation and instead making the collection of vow redemption fees the centerpiece of his fundraising plan. Rachel suum videns, Gregory’s crusade bull, is the first since Quia maior itself to include Innocent’s policy statement on vow redemption;¹⁸ and the promotional campaign that Rachel suum videns launched represents the first papal attempt to exploit Innocent’s vow redemption policy fully.

Historians have generally acknowledged that there was a shift in emphasis toward vow redemption in the thirteenth century, but they have tended to disagree about precisely where, when, and how it took place. Some have dated it to the pontificate of Innocent III,¹⁹ but others have seen it as a more gradual development that unfolded over the course of the century.²⁰ Still others have brought a regional perspective to the question. Christopher Tyerman and Simon Lloyd, for example, have argued that preachers introduced vow redemption en masse to England in 1234, but not necessarily to the rest of Europe.²¹ A closer examination of Gregory’s campaign will help to delineate more precisely the chronological development of this practice as a papal fundraising and recruitment technique.

More immediately, Gregory’s drive for redemption fees influenced the structure of his preaching campaign. It made it desirable for as many people as possible to take the cross. The sum demanded of crusaders to redeem their vows was typically set at the amount they would have spent if they had actually gone overseas.²² The fee, in effect, was pegged to the crusader’s economic standing: a magnate would incur greater expense crusading to Syria than would his retainer. In theory, then, it might seem most efficient to appeal to those with considerable resources, who would pay high fees to redeem their vows. This approach was not viable, however, because Gregory needed most wealthy cross-takers to fulfill their vows in person. It was from this “high-end” market that he hoped to draw the most highly esteemed fighters: the men who commanded the leisure and resources necessary to master mounted combat. In Gregory’s day the correlation between reputed military prowess and high economic status was still strong; the merchant elites of the cities were just beginning to break it down. His decision to rely upon vow redemption, therefore, meant that he would need to solicit many small vow redemption fees, rather than a few large ones. The result was a preaching campaign that, in order to achieve success, needed to persuade as many people as possible to swear crusade vows.

This requirement helped structure the plan for the preaching campaign. In this chapter I detail Gregory’s plans to reach a universal audience, to appeal to them, and to translate the enthusiasm he hoped to generate into tangible support for the crusade. Gregory took measures to ensure peace in Christendom, so that fighters would not be occupied in the West and travel would be easier. He employed mendicant friars as crusade preachers for the first time on a wide scale, sending them into the towns that had concentrations of population and audiences that seemed sympathetic to their preaching style. He took the unprecedented step of authorizing spiritual sanctions to compel attendance at crusade sermons. He created propaganda for the crusade, in some cases recalling time-honored traditions for appealing to fighters, in others devising novel images and arguments for taking the cross. Finally, he attempted to translate the enthusiasm that he hoped to rouse for cross-taking into action through vow redemption, other fundraising schemes, and a series of privileges for crusaders. The next chapter will examine the response to these ambitious plans.

Reaching the Audience

The first step for the preaching campaign was to reach the newly expanded audience that Gregory had identified. Chronicle accounts testify to papal plans to preach the cross to every segment of medieval society. Matthew Paris reported with astonishment that preachers urged the cross upon “people of every age, sex, condition, and strength, sick men and women even, as well as those rendered feeble and deficient by old age.” The “Life of Gregory IX” talked about crowds of men and women gathering to hear the word of the cross proclaimed to them. Roger of Wendover was careful to note that both men and women attended crusade preaching in England. Although preachers would still need to recruit young, able-bodied, and affluent men, since they were to be the core of the “new model” crusade army, the drive for vow redemption fees meant that they now needed the old, the not so able-bodied, and the less than affluent to take the cross as well. According to a Dominican chronicler, preachers in France exhorted “many barons and knights and also people in countless numbers” to take the cross. In the Low Countries, Philip Mouskes, who wrote a rhyming chronicle in the vernacular, saw “men of both high and low estate” taking the cross in response to the preaching. Matthew Paris believed the new approach was aimed at those of lower social and economic status. He called vow redemption a device intended to strip the “simple people” of their goods. Matthew was no advocate of social justice avant la lettre, but he hated to see anyone, voluntarily or not, handing over money to Rome. Secular clergy appear to have been another intended target. Philip Mouskes claimed that many clerics took the cross in the Low Countries. Turning from social and occupational groups to age groups, the new strategy opened the way to the elderly or dying taking crusade vows. Indeed, the death-bed was a good place to purchase a full indulgence of sins, since the chance of rising up from it to commit further indiscretions might be remote. Later in the century there were aged or dying people who swore crusade vows and then redeemed them after death by means of a testamentary bequest, or legacy, to the church. Legacies appear to have provided significant revenue to the Barons’ Crusade, but we do not know whether they were solicited in this fashion. Children, finally, did not interest the preachers, as the canonists insisted that minors could not swear binding vows.²³

Reaching every Christian required a Christendom-wide preaching campaign. Gregory addressed the bull announcing the expedition, Rachel suum videns, to “all the faithful” in England, to “all the faithful” in France, to the “diverse [ecclesiastical] provinces” and to “the archbishops and their suffragans throughout all the provinces” of the church. The orders to preach the cross that he issued around the same time also suggest that he sought wide coverage of Christendom. Churchmen in Ireland, Lombardy and Tuscany, the German lands (including Trier, Mainz, Cologne, and Salzburg) and France (including Rouen, Sens, and Troyes, “and other various provinces of France”) were sent copies of these orders. Contemporary chroniclers took up this idea of a universal preachin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Maps
• Introduction
• 1. The Preaching of the Holy Land Crusade: The Plan
• 2. The Preaching of the Holy Land Crusade: The Response
• 3. The Diversion to Constantinople
• 4. The Appeal to King Bela: Crusaders, Muslims, and Jews in Hungary
• 5. The Appeal to Count Thibaut: Crusaders, Jews, and Heretics in Champagne
• 6. The Appeal to Peter of Brittany: Crusaders and Jews in Western France
• 7. The Appeal to Earl Richard: Crusaders and Jews in England
• 8. The Constantinople Crusade
• 9. The Barons’ Crusaders in the Holy Land
• Conclusion
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Acknowledgments