Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence PAUL E. CHEVEDDEN / LOS ANGELES “The historian, ancient or modern, will always build his narrative around a backbone of propositions about past events which he must assume will never be seriously challenged, however interpretative the nature of that narrative may otherwise be”. Anthony Snodgrass1 Of all the ecclesiastical apparatus employed by the papacy to promote crusading, the Crusade indulgence was the most important. Like all institutional arrangements, the Crusade indulgence underwent a process of development. This development has been distorted by a teleological view of the facts that regards the Crusade indulgence as the direct expression of Pope Urban II’s Jerusalem Crusade (1095-1102) and the indulgence that was set forth in Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095)2. To help sort out the facts and to better understand the Clermont indulgence, it will be useful to sketch out a likely scenario of how crusading institutions developed. Once crusading was initiated, the Church moved to create institutions that would assist it. The Crusade indulgence was one of these institutions. It was part of a process of systematization, or institutionalization, whereby the Church adopted or created structural arrangements that would promote crusading. The institutionalization of the Crusade was an extended process, and was only systematized during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). The institutional components that came to make up 1 A. M. SNODGRASS, Archaeology and the Emergence of Greece, Ithaca (NY) 2006, 48- 49. 2 My previous article, Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095) and the Goal of the Eastern Crusade: “To liberate Jerusalem” or “To liberate the Church of God”? in: AHC 37/1 (2005) 57-108, explored Canon 2 for evidence of how the “First” Crusade was originally intended to unfold. Readers of the present article would profit from familiarity with the background provided in this earlier article. I am extremely grateful to Prof. Robert I. Burns, S.J., of the University of California at Los Angeles for helping me with the translation of the indulgenced grant issued by Pope Alexander II for Spain (see below note 56 and text) and to Prof. Donald J. Kagay of Albany State University for assistance on this text and the text of Canon 2, and for translating Urban II’s letter to Bishop Gerland of Agrigento of 10 October 1098 (see below note 48). AHC 37 (2005) 254 Paul E. Chevedden the Crusade were assumed piecemeal and incorporated over a period of time. There was not only a pronounced time lag between the adoption of various institutional components – the indulgence, the vow, the Cross, etc. – but there was also a time lag before various institutional components crystallized into a standard panoply. Moreover, the standard panoply was originally a diverse assemblage of structural arrangements, not a prescribed repertoire, and some of the component parts of the panoply had earlier been associated with Christian holy war. The Cross, for example, had been the triumphal symbol of Christ the conqueror from as far back as the second century and was first employed in battle in 312 by Emperor Constantine I (306-37). The indulgence had first been used to promote Christian holy war in 878 by Pope John VIII (872-82) (see below). “Votive obligations under which vows had binding consequences and created heritable duties” were first made compulsory upon Christian warriors during the early 1090s in Pope Urban II’s Iberian Crusade that sought to restore the archbishopric of Tarragona3. The combination of these elements together resulted from crusading; crusading did not result from the combination of these elements. And these elements were put together in a piecemeal way; they were not fused together all at once. The “Big Bang” Theory of the Crusade and Crusading Institutions This brief outline of the development of crusading institutions has a certain aspect of historical plausibility, but it is at variance with the conventional history of the Crusades. Conventionally, the Crusades began with a “Big Bang”, whereby crusading and crusading institutions emerged in a single moment, on the day Pope Urban II (1088-99) delivered his sermon at Clermont calling upon Christian warriors to march upon Jerusalem to liberate the Eastern Church. All at once a militant mass movement came into being that was equally a fusion “of the holy war and pilgrimage traditions”, “a war against the Saracens for the defence of Christendom”, and a movement of “reconquest of formerly Christian territories”. This enterprise “enjoyed papal blessings” and “a formal papal proclamation of the war”. Those that took part in it made “the crusader’s vow” and wore “the insig- 3 L. J. MCCRANK, Restoration and Reconquest in Medieval Catalonia: The Church and Principality of Tarragona, 971-1177, Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974, 255-56, 28081 nn. 30-34. On the Crusade vow, see J. A. BRUNDAGE, The Votive Obligations of Crusaders: The Development of a Canonistic Doctrine, in: Tr. 24 (1968) 77-118. Brundage is unaware that the Crusade vow was used prior to 1095. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 255 nia of the cross”. They, in turn, “were rewarded with a remission of penance” and, for those who died, the palm of martyrdom, in addition to receiving “the promises of personal protection” 4. Like Athena, who had sprung fully formed and fully armed from the head of Zeus, the Crusade had sprung fully formed, with a panoply of institutional trappings, from the head of Pope Urban. Scholars have differing opinions on the root cause or sine qua non condition of the “Big Bang” that brought the Crusade into being. Carl Erdmann points to “the unification of holy war with pilgrimage, something that Urban first brought about”. As he sees it, the evil marriage between war and pilgrimage (“war-pilgrimage”) was designed to unburden Christianity of an earlier commitment to peace, not by directly changing this commitment or by officially abolishing it, but by stealthily harnessing the spirit of peace to the true goal of the reform papacy: the expansion of its own power 5. Jonathan Riley-Smith also acclaims “war-pilgrimage” as the cause sine qua non of the Crusade. Like Erdmann, he credits Pope Urban with giving the idea of war a context in which it could be presented more convincingly, “because he associated [war] with the most charismatic of all traditional penances, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem” 6. Hans Eberhard Mayer accepts the “war-pilgrimage” thesis but maintains that “the astonishing success of Urban’s summons” lies in the linkage of the Clermont indulgence to “the universally popular idea of pilgrimage to Jerusalem” 7. Jean 4 This canon of Crusade characteristics is taken from J. A. BRUNDAGE, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader, Madison (WI) 1969, 25-26 n. 91. 5 C. ERDMANN, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, Stuttgart 1935 (= FKGG 6); repr. Darmstadt 1980, 319; trans. M. W. BALDWIN - W. GOFFART as The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, foreword and additional notes by M. W. BALDWIN, Princeton (NJ) 1977, 348. Erdmann’s idea of Crusade as “evil in disguise” (i.e., a war disguised as a pilgrimage) is further developed in J. RILEY-SMITH, Crusading as an Act of Love, in: Hist(L) 65 (1980) 17792. 6 J. RILEY-SMITH, The First Crusaders, 1095-1131, Cambridge 1997, 52. See also pp. 66, 74, 77, and 189, for references to the “war-pilgrimage” paradigm. 7 H. E. MAYER, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Stuttgart 1965; trans. J. GILLINGHAM as The Crusades, Oxford 21988, 36. “In the final analysis”, according to Mayer, “what was decisive [for the Crusade] was … the arming of the pilgrimage [to the Holy Sepulcher] and the idea of a reward which was latent in the crusading indulgence”. He claims that “the idea of indulgence only became really effective when it was linked with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem”. Mayer finds all pre-1095 indulgences lacking what it takes to produce meaningful results because he measures effectiveness by the standard of success attained by the “First” Crusade: “the full effects of the indulgence were felt only when it became linked with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem” (ibid., 12, 26-28). 256 Paul E. Chevedden Flori deems “war-pilgrimage” to be a proximate cause of the Crusade. The root cause was the potency of “the intended aim [of the Crusade]: the deliverance of the Holy Sepulcher. Only this objective allows and justifies the ideological fusion of holy war and pilgrimage that characterizes the Crusade” 8. Christopher Tyerman discredits the “war-pilgrimage” paradigm and offers in its place the “war-penance” paradigm: “the unapologetic and unequivocal combination of war and penance proposed by Urban II in 1095” 9. Nikolas Jaspert rejects a hybrid explanation and champions instead a complex causal nexus10. But whatever the sine qua non is considered to be, and whatever its constituent elements, the “Big Bang” theory remains beyond reproach: crusading emerged Athena-like in 1095 or shortly thereafter, bursting forth full-blown with a burgeoning institutional structure. 8 J. FLORI, Pour une redéfinition de la croisade, in: CCMéd 47 (October-December 2004) 329-50, 349. “Because of Jerusalem”, Flori states, “the expedition preached by Urban II changed in quality and even in its nature. What had been up to now a holy war became a Crusade” (ibid., 346). Flori defines the Crusade as follows: “The Crusade was a holy war having for its objective the recovery of Jerusalem’s holy places by the Christians”. See also ID., De Barbastro à Jérusalem: plaidoyer pour une redéfinition de la croisade, in: P. SÉNAC (ed.), Aquitaine-Espagne (VIIIe-XIIIe siècle), Poitiers 2001(= Civilisation médiévale 12), 129-46, 146, in which the Crusade is defined as “an armed expedition preached by the pope and having for its goal the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher”. These definitions mirror the views in P. ROUSSET, Histoire d’une idéologie: la croisade, Lausanne 1983, 9: “the Crusade is a war benefiting from ecclesiastical privileges and undertaken for the recovery of the Holy Places”. 9 Ch. TYERMAN, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades, London 2006, 56, 72-74. Although Tyerman attacks the “war-pilgrimage” paradigm, he still refers to the “First” Crusade as “the armed pilgrimage of 1096-9” (ibid., 258). 10 N. JASPERT , Die Kreuzzüge, Darmstadt 2003; trans. P. G. JESTICE as The Crusades, New York – London 2006, 32-33. The eight most important causes, according to Jaspert, are: “(1) the older understanding of just war and the newer concept of holy war as a tool of God, which made the crusade a form of meritorious use of violence; (2) emphasis on proper inner motivation and the war as service to one’s neighbor; (3) the Church’s appropriation of a Christianized knighthood, deeply influenced by feudal ideas of loyalty, and the diversion of its military energies to a form that was both attractive and honorable to the knights themselves; (4) the older tradition of pilgrimage, in which the Jerusalem pilgrimage took on an increased significance in the eleventh century; (5) the new, more active role of the papacy in the course of the Gregorian reform, which made the popes the recognized leaders of an expedition founded on hope of salvation and thus hallowed; (6) the religious unrest of the late eleventh century, with its manifold forms of innovative spiritual life and the Christocentrism they encouraged; (7) the growing individual concern about personal sinfulness, which came to a head right at this time; (8) the view that it was possible to find forgiveness for these sins through a special act of penance before God, and even to win remission of all temporal penalties for sin by taking part in a sanctified military expedition”. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 257 The “Big Bang” and the Crusade Indulgence The proposition of the “Big Bang” has become the mainstay of Crusade studies. It exercises an enormous influence on the field of Crusade scholarship, on the investigation of the Crusade indulgence, and on the study of the Clermont indulgence instituted by Pope Urban. Its powerful sway weighs down all attempts to provide an evolutionary history of the Crusade indulgence. The standard works on indulgences show evidence of its controlling influence11. The only monographic treatment of the Crusade indulgence was published a century ago, Adolf Gottlob’s pioneering treatise, Kreuzablass und Almosenablass12. Now a recent doctoral thesis by Ane Bysted takes up the topic anew. Her study is important and welcome. It abounds with insights and new findings. Bysted presents a thorough and careful examination of a major topic in both Western medieval, and Church, history, but unfortunately her revisionist thesis remains tied to the “Big Bang” theory of the Crusades. The assumption that forms her starting point is that “the Crusade indulgences were the institutionalisation of the idea that fighting for Christ and the Church was meritorious in the sight of God, and thus worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church”. From this premise, Bysted concludes: “This is precisely why the indulgences are intrinsic to the definition of crusades – they are signs that this was regarded as a special kind of war: a war pleasing to God”13. Bysted makes it seem as if there was a causal link between the institutionalization of the idea of spiritual merit for crusading and crusading being “worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church”. But one might present an argument for the worthiness of crusading for a spiritual 11 The standard studies include H. C. LEA, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, 3 vols., Philadelphia 1896; N. PAULUS, Geschichte des Ablasses im Mittelalter vom Ursprung bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols., Paderborn 1922-23; repr. Darmstadt 2000; B. POSCHMANN, Der Ablaß im Licht der Bußgeschichte, Bonn 1948 (= Theoph. 4); J. E. CAMPBELL, Indulgences: The Ordinary Power of Prelates Inferior to the Pope to Grant Indulgences: An Historical Synopsis and a Canonical Commentary, Ottawa 1953; E. M AGNIN, Indulgences, in: DThC 7 (1927) 1594-1636; É. JOMBART , Indulgences, in: DDC 5 (1953) 1331-52; E. VODOLA, Indulgences, in: DMA 6 (1985) 446-50. For an excellent overview of this literature, see BYSTED (as in note 13 below), 23-49. 12 A. GOTTLOB, Kreuzablass und Almosenablass. Eine Studie über die Frühzeit des Ablasswesens, Stuttgart 1906; repr. Amsterdam 1965 (= KRA 30/31). 13 A. L. BYSTED, In Merit as Well as in Reward: Indulgences, Spiritual Merit, and the Theology of the Crusades, c. 1095-1216, Ph.D. diss., Syddansk Universitet, 2004, 10. 258 Paul E. Chevedden reward that does not depend on the institutionalization of the idea of spiritual merit for crusading. If one were to ask, for example, Why do you think “the idea that fighting for Christ and the Church was meritorious in the sight of God, and [was] thus worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church”? the answer may not be because the Crusade indulgence institutionalized the idea of spiritual merit for crusading. The premise that the institutionalization of the idea of spiritual merit for crusading had something to do with making crusading “worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church” is not self-evident, nor does it appear to be true. The worthiness of crusading for any likely spiritual reward had nothing at all to do with the institutionalization of the idea of spiritual merit for crusading. Crusading was not deemed “worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church” because the institution of the Crusade indulgence recognized it as being “meritorious in the sight of God”. Rather, the institution of the Crusade indulgence emerged because crusading itself was recognized as being meritorious in God’s eyes. This recognition, important though it was, was clearly a less fundamental step than the original recognition by early Christian theologians that “military action could be inspired and supported by God”14. To enhance the importance of the transition from Christian holy war to Crusade, scholars have attempted to maintain the fiction that the transition to Crusade was more important than the transition to holy war, or to maintain that the transition to Crusade represented “an unexpected turning” for Western Europe15. The recognition “that fighting for Christ and the Church was meritorious in the sight of God, and [was] thus worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church” was not something that Pope Urban II first brought about. Nor was the Crusade indulgence the only institutionalized form of spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church for fighting directed against the common enemies of Christendom16. As far back as the ninth 14 J. HELGELAND - R. J. DALY - J. P. BURNS, Christians and the Military: The Early Experience, Philadelphia 1985, 90. See also the classic work on this topic, A. von HARNACK, Militia Christi: die christliche Religion und der Soldatenstand in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Tübingen 1905; repr. Darmstadt 1963; trans. D. M. GRACIE as Militia Christi: The Christian Religion and the Military in the First Three Centuries, Philadelphia 1981. 15 RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 6. There has been a tendency to view the Crusade as a fundamental watershed in the history of Western Christendom. This outlook introduces an unavoidable sense of discontinuity in history that is at odds with the historical record. 16 Bysted is well aware of this fact: “The idea that war for the Church would merit a reward as well as the papal promises of such rewards did not originate with the fight against The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 259 century, Pope Leo IV (847-55) had promised eternal life to Christian warriors who died in battle fighting the Muslims. This promise was one among a host of measures taken by the papacy to counter Islamic aggression during the ninth century. Between 827 and 902, the Aghlabids ousted the Byzantines from Sicily. Throughout this period and beyond, Muslim raids penetrated southern Italy, Sardinia, Corsica, the Rhône valley, and even the Maritime Alps. Fullscale Muslim military expeditions captured Bari in 841 and Taranto in 846. In the same year that Taranto fell, the Muslims attacked Rome itself and sacked the basilica of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and carried off, together with the altar above his tomb, all the ornaments and treasures17. This event shocked Christendom and left its mark as a lasting memory on the Latin West, preserved in the chanson de geste entitled The Destruction of Rome. To prevent future catastrophes, Pope Leo IV organized an alliance with Rome, Amalfi, Naples, and Gaeta, and augmented the fortifications of Rome with the impressive Leonine walls. In 853, he wrote to Frankish warriors to assure them that those who died fighting the Muslims would be granted a heavenly reward: Now we hope that none of you will be slain, but we wish you to know that the kingdom of heaven will be given as a reward to those who shall be killed in this war. For the Omnipotent knows that they lost their lives fighting for the truth of the faith, for the preservation of their country, and the defence of Christians. And therefore God will give them the reward which we have named18. the Muslims. It occurs already in the 8th century when popes Gregory III, Stephen II and Paul I established contacts with the Franks in order to persuade them to defend the papal states and interests against the Lombards and the Greeks (BYSTED [as in note 13], 59). 17 Mense Augusto Saraceni Maurique Tiberi Romam adgressi, basilicam beati Petri apostolorum principis devastantes, ablates cum ipso altari, quod tumbae memorati apostolorum principis superpositum fuerat, omnibus ornamentis atque thesauris, Annales Bertiniani, ed. G. WAITZ, Hanover 1883 (= MGH.SRG 5), 34; trans. G. CRESPI, The Arabs in Europe, New York 1986, 74. 18 Quisquis … in hoc belli certamine fideliter mortuus fuerit, regna illi coelestia minime negabuntur. Novit enim omnipotens, si quislibet vestrorum morietur, quod pro veritate fidei et salvatione patrie ac defensione Christianorum mortuus est, ideo ab eo praetitulatum premium consequetur, Leo IV to the Frankish army, s.a. 853, MGH.Ep 5: 601; PL 115: 657A and 161: 720A; trans. O. J. THATCHER - E. H. MCNEAL (eds.), A Source Book for Mediæval History, New York 1905, 511-12. 260 Paul E. Chevedden The First Holy War Indulgence The Islamic threat preoccupied the papacy of Pope John VIII (872-82)19. In 877, Pope John traveled to France in order to enlist the support of the Carolingians. In the following year, the bishops in the realm of Louis the Stammerer (846-79) wrote to the pope and asked him about the fate of those who died in combat fighting pagans and unbelievers. The pope responded with these words: You have modestly expressed a desire to know whether those who have recently died in war, fighting in defence of the Holy Church of God and for the preservation of the Christian religion and of the state, or those who may in the future fall in the same cause, may obtain indulgence for their sins (indulgentiam … delictorum). We confidently reply that those who, out of love of the Catholic religion, shall die in battle fighting bravely against pagans and unbelievers, shall enter the rest of eternal life. For the Lord has said through his prophet: “In whatever hour a sinner shall be converted, I will remember his sins no longer” (paraphrase of Ezek. 33:12 and 18:22), like the good thief who gained Paradise by confessing on the cross (Lk. 23:43). To provide further validation for the indulgence, the pope adds an additional reference from scripture, telling the story of King Manasseh in 2 Chronicles 33:11-17: Manasseh, a certain very impure king was imprisoned in a very small cell and doing penance there with the perfection of the indulgence, he also obtained possession of his earlier realm because of the mercy of God since it is immense in regard to the human race. A formula of absolution concludes the letter: We, although of low standing, absolve their sins (absolvimus), as much as we may, by the intercession of St. Peter the Apostle, who has the power of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth (Matt. 16:19), and commend them by our prayers to the Lord20. 19 F. E. ENGREEN, Pope John the Eighth and the Arabs, in: Spec. 20 (1945) 318-330; A. BECKER, Papst Urban II (1088-1099), vol. 2, Der Papst, die griechische Christenheit und der Kreuzzug, Stuttgart 1988 (= SMGH 19/2), 365-68. In 871, Louis the Stammerer, the great-grandson of the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, led the alliance that successfully retook Bari nineteen years after his first attempt had failed. In 880, the Byzantines regained Taranto. Yet, even after the loss of their urban bases in Italy, Muslim bands became even more mobile and dangerous, conducting many devastating raids both along the coastlands and in the interior of Western Europe. 20 Quia veneranda fraternitas vestra modesta interrogatione sciscitans quaesivit, utrum hi, qui pro defensione sanctae Dei ecclesiae et pro statu Christianae religionis ac rei publicae in bello nuper ceciderunt aut de reliquo pro eadem re casuri sunt, indulgentiam possint consequi delictorum, audenter Christi Dei nostri pietate respondemus, quoniam illi, qui cum pietate catholicae religionis in belli certamine cadunt, requies eos eternae vitae suscipiet contra pa- The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 261 In 1941, Étienne Delaruelle made a detailed examination of John VIII’s promise of an indulgence for those who died fighting against pagans and unbelievers and concluded that the pope had indeed issued a genuine indulgence21. ganos atque infideles strenue dimicantes, eo quod Dominus per prophetam dignatus est dicere: “Peccator quacumque hora conversus fuerit, omnium iniquitatum illius non recordabor amplius”, et [ut] venerabilis ille latro in una confessionis voce de cruce meruit paradysum; Manasses quoque impurissimus quondam rex captus carcerique artissimo religatus ibi poenitentiam agens cum perfectione indulgentiae etiam regni pristini propter Domini misericordiam, quia inmensa est circa genus humanum, adeptus est solium. Nostra prefatos mediocritate, intercessione beati Petri apostoli, cuius potestas ligandi atque solvendi est in caelo et in terra, quantum fas est, absolvimus praecibusque illos Domino commendamus, John VIII to the bishops in the realm of Louis II (878); MGH.Ep 7: 126-27; PL 126: 816; trans. THATCHER MCNEAL (as in note 18), 512, with additions and amendments made by author. Simon Coupland’s perceptive remarks on this letter are worth noting: “Although this letter has often been quoted as the first sign of the Crusade mentality, it simply reflected the prevailing attitude of the time, namely that it was a Christian’s duty to fight in defence of the Church, and that God would reward those who died in his service” (S. COUPLAND, The Rod of God’s Wrath or the People of God’s Wrath? The Carolingian Theology of the Viking Invasions, in: JEH 42 [October 1991] 535-554, 548). 21 É. DELARUELLE , L’idée de croisade au moyen âge, Turin 1980, 39-41. Delaruelle maintained that John VIII’s letter of indulgence was solidly based in Christian doctrine and theology, and he spelled out the principles enunciated in the letter as follows: “[1] par guerre sainte, il faut entendre une guerre menée pour défendre l’Eglise contre les païens et maintenir du même coup dans son état actuel le Christianisme considéré comme lié à la respublica. Soit dit en passant, il y a dans cette énumération: ecclesia, religio christiana, respublica une formulation à laquelle on n’avait peut-être pas encore atteint, de l’idée de Chrétienté; [2] les bénéficiaires de la libéralité spirituelle du pape seront tous les participants à la guerre sainte qui y trouveraient la mort en combattant pourvu, bien entendu, qu’ils soient dans les dispositions de piété exigées par la religion catholique. Il serait facile de préciser ces dispositions en renvoyant à la théologie du martyre; [3] la promesse du pape porte sur la vie éternelle, autrement dit sur le pardon de toutes les fautes qui peuvent faire obstacle à l’entrée en jouissance de Dieu; [4] cette promesse se fonde sur la connaissance des miséricordes de Dieu, telles que l’Ecriture les fait connaître, telles surtout qu’elles éclatent dans la prière rédemptrice du Christ; [5] mais, et ce point tout nouveau mérite particulièrement d’être souligné, le pape règle l’effusion de cette miséricorde et son efficacité. C’est qu’il est le successeur de saint Pierre auquel le pouvoir des clés a été confié. C’est donc à lui qu’il appartient de promulguer le pardon, de délier (absolvimus) les âmes. Ce n’est pas une grâce qu’il demande à Dieu, c’est un droit, une fonction qu’il exerce en pleine connaissance de cause… . Tout ce commentaire laisse deviner déjà notre conclusion: Jean VIII a accordé une indulgence proprement dite, une de ces indulgences qui caractériseront les Croisades au sens strict. Je ne vois pour mon compte aucune différence substantielle entre les promesses de Jean et celles d’Urbain II…” Gottlob also considers John VIII’s indulgenced grant to be a true indulgence (GOTTLOB [as in note 12], 23-27). 262 Paul E. Chevedden James Brundage and other scholars have rejected this finding. Brundage presents the following arguments: “While John VIII dealt with the matter more explicitly and in slightly greater detail than did Leo IV, there was no essential difference between their two statements. Both affirmed clearly the salvific value of fighting against the enemies of Christendom. Both granted general absolutions to those who were killed in these struggles; Pope John in this connection explicitly invoked the Petrine power of binding and loosing, while Leo IV did not. In neither letter, however, do we have any mention of the remission of the punishment for sin that is essential to the concept of an indulgence. What these two letters do show, and that very clearly, is the doctrine that war against the infidel is sanctified and sanctifying for those who participate in it – at least if they have the misfortune to be killed in the struggle”. Brundage further states: “To speak of the ninthcentury letters of Pope Leo IV and Pope John VIII, for example, as granting indulgences is to speak nonsense, if the term ‘indulgence’ is understood in the sense in which the word is used by modern theologians” 22. Yet who would speak such nonsense? It would be absurd to think that a ninth-century indulgence would perfectly meet all the criteria established by modern theologians. In the ninth century there was no distinction between guilt (culpa) and punishment (pena), and between temporal and eternal punishment, due to sin. These distinctions are part of the modern definition of the indulgence and arose as the result of a long process of 22 BRUNDAGE, Medieval Canon Law (as in note 4), 23, 145. In an extended discussion of John VIII’s indulgence, Flori considers it to be neither an indulgence nor a general absolution: “Ni à une « indulgence » au sens ultérieur du terme, ni même à une « absolution générale » comme le pense J. A. Brundage, mais à un texte par lequel le pape, considérant que la guerre ici menée est juste et utile à Rome, à l’Église, à l’État, à Dieu, ne peut en aucun cas apporter quelque macule que ce soit à ceux qui y prendront part” (J. FLORI, La Guerre sainte: La formation de l’idée de croisade dans l’Occident chrétien, Paris 2001, 53). Strangely, Bysted does not attempt to determine whether or not this indulgence qualifies as a true indulgence. She directs her comments to the question of a remission of penance: “John VIII does not appear to be speaking of the reward in terms of remissions of penance, or of the participation in the battle as something that might count as a penance, as did later popes. His idea seems rather to be that the warriors who give their life are showing the utmost of penitence and a proof of true conversion, and for this reason they will surely be justified and saved” (BYSTED [as in note 13], 62). Her emphasis on a remission of penance, which is utterly absent from this indulgence, seems to have its origin in the work of Adolf Gottlob. He argued that John VIII had dispensed with the remission of penance because he believed that God had already forgiven the dead warriors their guilt for having sinned: “Der Gedanke Johanns ist also: Da Gott in diesen Fällen auf die Busswerke verzichtet, von ihnen abgesehen hat, so will auch ich dies tun” (GOTTLOB [as in note 12], 25-26). The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 263 historical development. As Nikolaus Paulus has shown, the formula remissio a poena et culpa was originally an expression that was used in a nontechnical sense to refer to a plenary indulgence and conveyed the idea of a remission of both sins and penances 23. Only later did this formula assume the modern meaning of a remission of the punishment for sin and a remission of the guilt of sin. What formulas were used in the ninth century to express the idea of a remission of sin, or of the punishment due to sin? Pope John VIII uses two expressions to communicate this idea: indulgentiam … delictorum and absolvimus24. We have here all the marks of a true indulgence. The Church has singled out some good work conducive to the benefit of the entire Church to be performed by Christians and has declared that those who perform this work, under the conditions laid down by the Church, will be released from their sins (indulgentiam … delictorum; absolvimus) and enter the rest of eternal life. The Church, in effect, has declared that those who have died in defense of their faith fighting against pagans and unbelievers have made through their act of self-sacrifice a complete payment of the debt that they owe to God for having sinned, provided that they have fulfilled the conditions for gaining the indulgence: (1) that they act out of love of the Catholic religion; and, (2) suffer death fighting bravely in this conflict. These conditions are analogous to the conditions of Urban II’s Clermont indulgence: (1) the performance of the indulgenced work must be done for devotion alone; and, (2) the recipient of the indulgence must engage in a military enterprise for the good of the entire Church (see below). The holy war indulgence granted by John VIII is grounded in scripture (Ezek. 18:22; Ezek. 33:12; 2 Chronicles 33:11-17; Lk 23:43; and Matt. 16:19) and is linked to the sacrament of Penance. Since indulgences were a means of making satisfaction to God for sin, it is quite understandable that they would be associated closely with the satisfactory element of the sacrament of Penance. Hence, this indulgence refers to contrition or conversion (conversus fuerit), confession (confessionis), the acceptance of penance (paenitentiam), and the remission of sins (indulgentiam … delictorum; absolvimus). The distinctive feature of this indulgence is that it is restricted 23 PAULUS (as in note 11), 2: 105-13; 3: 242-47. BYSTED (as in note 13), 19-20, 142-43, 163-64, 179-90, also endorses this view. 24 Bysted points out that “there was a long tradition for using the word ‘sin’ in the sense of punishments for sins”, so it is entirely possible that the formulas indulgentiam … delictorum and absolvimus meant the same as the remission before God of the punishment due to sin (BYSTED [as in note 13], 143, 163, 179, 289). 264 Paul E. Chevedden to those who die in defense of their faith fighting against pagans and unbelievers. Following the onset of the Crusades, indulgences would be granted not only to those who died in battle but also to those who fought and survived. The introduction of a more comprehensive form of indulgence in the eleventh century would not only change the conditions of the indulgence but also the benefits that were offered (see below). The formula of absolution that concludes the letter of indulgence is similar to later formulas of indulgence. The indulgence formula of the conciliar constitution Ad liberandam (“To Liberate the Holy Land”), issued by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), has a marked resemblance to John VIII’s indulgence formula: We therefore, trusting in the mercy of almighty God and in the authority of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, do grant, by the power of binding and loosing that God has conferred upon us, albeit unworthy…25. In John VIII’s indulgence formula, the intercessory powers of St. Peter are invoked. The indulgence is granted by the intercession of St. Peter the Apostle, who has the power of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth (Matt. 16:19). Later indulgences were based either on the power of intercession (of God, of Peter and Paul, of the apostles, of the saints) or on the power of the keys, and, during the thirteenth century, indulgences were based primarily on the power of the keys 26. Pope John’s indulgence is based on the power of intersession of St. Peter whose power of binding and loosing is exercised by John VIII. This power, which had been granted by God (Matt. 16:19; Matt. 18:18; John 20:22-23), was applied here by the pope and effected a full remission of sins. From the very 25 Nos igitur omnipotentis Dei misericordia, et beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli auctoritate confisi, ex illa quam nobis, licet indigne, Deus ligandi atque solvendi contulit potestate…, Fourth Lateran Council (1215); N. P. TANNER (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols., Washington DC 1990, 1: 270 (c. 71). Nearly the same formula is to be found in Innocent III’s bulls Post miserabile and Quia maior. See Innocent III, Die Register Innocenz’ III, vol. 1, Pontifikatsjahr 1198/99, ed. O. H AGENEDER - A. H AIDACHER, Graz 1964 (= Publikationen der Abteilung für historische Studien des Osterreichischen Kulturinstituts in Rom, II, Abteilung, I, Reihe, 1), 503, no. 336 (PL 214: 311B); PL 216: 818C-D. According to Bysted – citing Gottlob, Paulus, and Mayer – “the formula of the crusade indulgence in Ad liberandam became the standard formula used in almost all later 13th and 14th century crusading bulls, and even into the 16th century” (BYSTED [as in note 13], 142). 26 [The Church] has received the keys of the Kingdom of heaven so that, in her, sins may be forgiven through Christ’s blood and the Holy Spirit’s action. In this Church, the soul dead through sin comes back to life in order to live with Christ, whose grace has saved us (ST . AUGUSTINE, Sermo, 214.11; PL 38: 1071-1072; BYSTED [as in note 13], 128, 161, 212-17, 290). The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 265 beginning, popes who granted indulgences did so in the knowledge that those who performed the indulgenced work and fulfilled all the requirements for gaining an indulgence obtained remission of their sins from God. The Institutionalization of Christian Holy War Long before Urban’s call to Crusade at Clermont, the papacy had institutionalized the conflict with Islam by making this conflict “worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church”. This reward first took the form of a promise of eternal life to those who died fighting for the truth of the faith, for the preservation of their country, and the defence of Christians (Leo IV) and was later embodied in a holy war indulgence (John VIII). The institutionalization of spiritual merit for the war with Islam established a set of legal and religious authorizations that granted legitimacy to this struggle. These authorizations were consciously transmitted from generation to generation over centuries and became the basis for canonistic norms promoting such action. From the ninth century onward, the war with Islam had become ensconced in an institutional order with structural arrangements and a set of role expectations that was passed on to succeeding generations. Two hundred years before Urban’s Jerusalem Crusade, this war had become the special task of the papacy, as “the papacy struggl[ed] to deal with ‘that most accursed race of Saracens’ [ipsa nefandissima gente Saracenorum]” and stem the tide of Islamic aggression in the central Mediterranean27. This seems at first glance a plausible conclusion, even though the evidence for institutionalized warfare promoted by other popes after Leo IV and John VIII is limited. Erdmann however uses the actions of Leo IV and John VIII to support a different view: that the measures enacted in the ninth century regarding Christian holy war had been allowed to lapse and were reinstated only in the eleventh century and “then carried to new heights” 28. This is a possible reconstruction of the facts, but only if papal 27 Pope BENEDICT IV (900-903), Epistola 3; PL 131: 44A; trans. J. GILCHRIST , The Papacy and War against the “Saracens”, 795-1216, in: International History Review 10 (1988) 174-97, 183. According to Augustin Fliche, from the ninth century onward, “la lutte contre les Musulmans devint la chose de la papauté” (A. FLICHE , review of Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, by C. ERDMANN, in: RHEF 23 [1937] 58-65). 28 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 23-24; Eng. trans., 27-28. BYSTED (as in note 13), 63, accepts this position. Brundage makes the argument that while the holy war decrees of Leo IV and John VIII were clear, they somehow “remained unclear for a very 266 Paul E. Chevedden policy regarding Christian holy war was a failure and needed to be annulled or abandoned. But the advantages conferred by the holy war indulgence were too obvious for it to be annulled or abandoned by the papacy, and this would have been especially so in light of the continuing threat posed by militant Islam. John Gilchrist vigorously argues against Erdmann’s “hibernation” thesis and maintains that “the papacy of the ninth and tenth centuries pursu[ed] a consistent policy of aggressive [sic] warfare against ‘Saracens’ to the best of its ability”. Gilchrist points out that the text of Leo IV “became one of the most widely cited texts by the canonists of the later [Papal] Reform [movement], for example, Gratian C. 23 q. 8 c. 9 and q. 5 c. 46 [attributed to Nicholas I]” and that the canonistic norm laid down by Leo IV should not be regarded as exceptional29. Earlier, Ivo of Chartres had incorporated letters of Leo IV and John VIII on warfare into his canonical collections 30. Gilchrist rejects Erdmann’s idea that there was a sharp break with the past on the part of the reform popes from an anti-war to a pro-war stance and instead views the early history of the conflict between Western Christendom and the Islamic world as the fairly harmonious flowing together of the various currents of thought that later made up crusading ideology. Gilchrist’s “continuity” thesis is supported by a wealth of recent scholarship31. long time”: “The nature and meaning of the spiritual merits that soldiers could earn by participating in a holy war, as well as the theological implications of this idea, remained unclear for a very long time, both to those who held out promises of such merit and, even more, I suspect, to those who acted on those promises” (J. A. BRUNDAGE, The Hierarchy of Violence in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Canonists, in: International History Review 17 [1995] 670-92, 677). Others disagree; cf. DELARUELLE (as in note 21), 24-41, which considers John VIII to be a pivotal figure in the development of the Christian concept of holy war and faults Erdmann for giving insufficient attention to pre-eleventh-century papal texts that deal with warfare. 29 GILCHRIST (as in note 27), 174-97, 181-82 and n. 43. 30 See the provisional edition of Ivo of Chartres’ Panormia edited by B. BRASINGTON and M. BRETT, which is accessible online: http://wtfaculty.wtamu.edu/~bbrasington/Panormia.html (accessed 9 March 2006), 8.27, 8.30; and the provisional edition of Ivo of Chartres’ Decretum edited by M. BRETT, which is also accessible online: http://imaging.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/ivo/decretum.html (accessed 9 March 2006), 10.68, 69, 71, 83, 87. 31 See J. M. WALLACE-HADRILL, War and Peace in the Early Middle Ages, in: ID., (ed.), Early Medieval History, Oxford 1975, 19-38; F. E. PRINZ, King, Clergy and War at the Time of the Carolingians, in: M. H. KING - W. M. STEVENS (eds.), Saints, Scholars, and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honour of Charles W. Jones, 2 vols., Collegeville (MN) 1979, 2: 301-329; J. L. NELSON, The Church’s Military Service in the Ninth Century: A Contemporary Comparative View, in: W. J. SHEILS (ed.), The Church and War: Papers The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 267 If this analysis is accepted, it has some important implications. First, contra Bysted, it would seem “the idea that fighting for Christ and the Church was meritorious in the sight of God” had a long history prior to the establishment of the Crusade indulgence. Second, this idea had already been institutionalized by Leo IV and John VIII. Bysted contends that the institution of indulgences “can hardly be termed an institution at all in the 11th and early 12th century”. Even “by the First Crusade the indulgence was not an institution yet”, she claims. “It had not been defined by councils, it had no fixed vocabulary, nor had it been explained by theologians” 32. If the requirements for an indulgence are a definition by Church councils, a fixed vocabulary, and theological explanations, the indulgence is barred from undergoing a developmental, or historical, evolution; it must first appear in a final and completed state. Third, indulgences do not appear to be essential to the definition of Crusade. Bysted argues that because “crusade indulgences were the institutionalisation of the idea that fighting for Christ and the Church was meritorious in the sight of God”, indulgences “are intrinsic to the definition of crusades”. In other words, because the institutional development of the Crusade came to include the indulgence – among a whole host of institutional arrangements – this indulgence is “intrinsic” to how crusading should be defined. This is so, Bysted maintains, because Crusade indulgences were “signs” that crusading “was regarded as a special kind of war: a war pleasing to God”33. But crusading Read at the Twenty-First Summer Meeting and the Twenty-Second Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical Historical Society, Oxford 1983, 15-30; G. A. LOUD, The Church, Warfare and Military Obligation in Norman Italy, in: W. J. SHEILS (ed.), The Church and War, 3145; M. MC CORMICK, The Liturgy of War in the Early Middle Ages: Crisis, Litanies, and the Carolingian Monarchy, in: Viator 15 (1984) 1-23; ID., Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West, Cambridge 1986; ID., A New Ninth-Century Witness to the Carolingian Mass against the Pagans, in: RBen 97 (1987) 6886; COUPLAND (as in note 20); J. R. E. BLIESE, St. Cuthbert and War, in: Journal of Medieval History 24 (September 1998) 215-41; H. MAGENNIS, Warrior Saints, Warfare, and the Hagiography of Ælfric of Eynsham, in: Tr. 56 (2001) 27-51; FLORI, La Guerre sainte (as in note 22); J. FRANCE, Holy War and Holy Men: Erdmann and the Lives of the Saints, in: M. BULL - N. HOUSLEY (eds.), The Experience of Crusading, vol. 1, Western Approaches, Cambridge 2003, 193-208. 32 BYSTED (as in note 13), 10, 104. “In the early crusading period”, Bysted argues, “the indulgence was not yet a firmly established institution” (ibid., 218). Bysted’s position reflects the views in Ch. TYERMAN, The Invention of the Crusades, Toronto 1998 (see below notes 38, 39, 40, and 41 and text). Her position is criticized in FLORI, Redéfinition (as in note 8), 337-38. 33 BYSTED (as in note 13), 10. 268 Paul E. Chevedden was something that existed in its own right and needed no sign as proof of its existence. The fact that the Crusade indulgence was a “sign” that crusading was “a war pleasing to God” is precisely why the Crusade indulgence is not intrinsic to the definition of the Crusade. As a “sign”, the Crusade indulgence could only refer to, or stand for, something other than itself, and that something else was crusading. Crusading had somehow to make its appearance in reality before it expressed itself in institutional form. First, the Crusade must exist; then it can proceed to create its institutions. The most famous scholar of late Republican Rome, Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BCE), emphasized this principle. In his lost Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum (“Antiquities of Human and Divine Things”), he is quoted by Saint Augustine as saying: As the painter is prior to the painting, and the architect prior to the building, so are the cities prior to the institutions of the cities34. Institutional structures, after all, can only copy life; they do not create it. Indulgences: An Extrinsic Element of Crusading Crusade indulgences should not be seen as essential or intrinsic to crusading, or even as vital to the understanding of the Crusades as meritorious wars. The abundant institutional structures by which the Crusades became enmeshed were extrinsic to the enterprise35. Scholars have attempted to identify a certain complex of ideas and institutions that can be attached to crusading, so that they will be able to identify crusading and its intrinsic character by finding expressions of these ideas and institutions. But it is not sufficient to pile up data pertaining to crusading ideas and institutions (e.g., the ecclesiastical apparatus of indulgence, vow, and Cross) and seek a connection with crusading activities. All that will result is the creation of an absolute tautology between the effects (ideas and institutions) and their cause (crusading)36. What Crusade historians have not realized is that the 34 ST. AUGUSTINE, Civitas Dei, VI.4; trans., E. VOEGELIN, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction, Chicago 1987, 87-88. 35 The ecclesiastical privileges associated with crusading, as Flori states, “are the declarative signs, not the foundational elements”, of crusading (FLORI, Redéfinition [as in note 8], 349). Others disagree; cf. BRUNDAGE, Medieval Canon Law (as in note 4), 145: “The granting of [the Crusade] indulgence for any expedition may well be considered to define it as a crusade; expeditions for which it was not given can scarcely be considered crusades at all”. 36 This point is driven home in FLORI, Redéfinition (as in note 8), 348: “The pluralist [Crusade historian]s make these ‘indulgences’ and the rites that are dependent on them the The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 269 existence of crusading ideas and institutions is proof that crusading is already underway, not proof that crusading is getting underway37. In his book, “The Invention of the Crusades” (1998), Christopher Tyerman maintains that the appropriate institutional markers for determining the existence of crusading were not made manifest until the pontificate of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). For Tyerman, the institutionalization of crusading awaited the development of what he calls “judicial crusading” in the thirteenth century when a full array of crusading institutions made their appearance. The institutional development that crusading underwent during the eleventh and twelfth centuries is for Tyerman “an elusive and protean phenomenon”, exhibiting a “disparity of practice” and an “uncertainty of focus” that defies “legal definition”. The haphazard and openended process that typifies crusading from the beginning, with no rigid patterns and with, purportedly, no certainty of focus to sustain and guide the movement, leaves Tyerman confused. The “elusive and protean phenomenon” of crusading, in all of its bewildering variety, runs contrary to the content of crusading as extracted and expounded by “thirteenth-century intellectuals”. The unity of crusading would seem to demand a uniform pattern of development, requiring an orderly, goal-directed process that unfolds according to a preordained design. Tyerman searches in vain for “a homogenous movement” that measures up to his highly formalized notion of crusading. With some reservations, he settles upon “Innocent III’s codification of crusade organization” as the threshold event that brought “official clarity, attempted definition and some uniformity” to a range of activities that only “after 1187” could properly be called Crusades 38. But the crusading movement was not the result of methodical and systematic planning. Had it emerged in this fashion, it might have arisen fullcriteria of the Crusade, which comes down to saying that a Crusade is an enterprise … that matches the privileges of Crusade!” Flori goes on to postulate his own theory of the Crusade that is itself a tautology. 37 Erdmann’s statement that “the crusading idea became articulate only after it had developed in real life” puts the process by which crusading could be tied to specific signs – its articulation – after the development of actual crusading (ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke [as in note 5], 133; Eng. trans., 147). The institutionalization of crusading, according to Erdmann, occurred after the onset of real crusading. 38 TYERMAN, Invention (as in note 32), 10, 12, 23, 73, 132 n. 61. Tyerman finds great disparity in crusading practice and institutions from the beginning, which “hardly confirms the creation of a homogeneous movement, more a changing series of modified and conservative associations, habits and responses, stimulated by new political and ecclesiastical circumstances but rooted in tradition” (ID., God’s War [as in note 9], 260). 270 Paul E. Chevedden blown in its developed final institutionalized form. Nor was crusading the result of an idea. Had it developed out of an idea, this idea might have been methodically and systematically worked out. Yet how did the institutional development of crusading interact with the actual experience of crusading? Tyerman fails to grasp the complex interplay between the ideological and institutional development of crusading and the actual experience of crusading. Ideological and institutional elements became more accentuated during times of crises, when crusading was in danger of loosing its authority and support. To defend and promote the enterprise after major catastrophes (e.g., Ḥiṭṭīn in 1187 and Alarcos in 1195), vigorous efforts were made to formalize the institution and the ideology of crusading. Paradoxically, institutional structures were far weaker when the enterprise was robust and more robust after the enterprise had been weakened by reversals. Hence, the development of institutional structures was in inverse proportion to the actual success of the crusading movement39. Tyerman assumes incorrectly that the institutionalization of crusading worked in strict synchrony with the practice of crusading and equates the enterprise with the robust phase of its institutional and ideological development that followed upon the disastrous Crusader defeat at Ḥiṭṭīn. He cannot credit the common experience of crusading, stretching back to the 1060s in the central and western Mediterranean, as being part of the crusading enterprise40. Tyerman’s reluctance to use the term “crusade” prior to the pontificate of Innocent III may appear extreme, but most Crusade historians are Tyermans in the sense that they reserve using the term “crusade” until 39 Frederick H. Russell observes that “the theory of the crusades only appeared after crusading activity had lost much of its importance, at least in expeditions to the Holy Land”. He adds that “even if the definitive formulation [of the Crusade] only emerged with Hostiensis”, “the essential features of the crusade were recognized much earlier” (F. H. RUSSELL, The Just War in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 1975 [= CSMLT 3rd ser., 8], 210). 40 Tyerman has not been moved to produce a history of the Crusades in accordance with his provocative theory. In fact, his recent studies of the Crusades are a tacit rejection of his theory. Instead of adhering to his hypothesis and starting his account of the Crusades in the thirteenth century, he sticks to the 1095 master narrative (See Ch. TYERMAN, Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades, Oxford 2004; ID., The Crusades: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford 2006; ID., God’s War [as in note 9]). On the Norman war against Islam in Sicily (1059-91) as the First Crusade, see CHEVEDDEN, Canon 2 (as in note 2), 95; ID., The Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade: A New (Old) Paradigm for Understanding the Crusades, in: Islam 83 (June 2006) 90-136. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 271 crusading had undergone some degree of institutionalization41. Crusading, however, should not be equated with its institutional or ideological development. If it is, the historian runs the danger of exaggerating the significance of the idiosyncratic thought of individual canonists or Curial legists at the expense of the common experience of crusading. Likewise, the Crusade indulgence does not equate with crusading. The modalities of experience should not be equated with the social and institutional structures that issue from that experience. Just as what is formalized and theorized must be properly related to what is carried out in practice, any attempt to understand the Crusade indulgence must begin by asking the right question. The question that scholars have posed is, What social structure, or intellectual construct, caused crusading to be deemed “worthy of a spiritual reward proclaimed by the Church”? The question that scholars should be asking is, What prevailing social action intensified to a point where this action ultimately solidified into supporting social structures and legal codes? The real focus of inquiry should be the historical events that lay behind the Crusade indulgence, not the intellectual-theological ideas that flowed from these events. Bysted contends that “the indulgence is not an accidental quality to crusading; on the contrary, it is an expression of the very essence of the matter, and of what makes this a special kind of war: that it is meritorious” 42. She assumes incorrectly that there was a central theme running through the crusading enterprise, and that theme was the indulgence. The Crusade indulgence, however, was not essential to the existence of crusading. It was a by-product of crusading, not the essence of the enterprise. If there was no taking of the Cross, if there was no crusading vow, if there was no granting of indulgences, if there was no crusading battle cry, if there was no papal banner, if crusading was divested of its connection to pilgrimage, if there was no staff or pilgrim pouch worn by Crusaders, if there was no papal protection for participants, no papal protection for the wives of participants, no papal protection for the families of participants, no papal protection for the property of participants, no financial privileges, and if 41 The classic study that ties the emergence of crusading to the development of crusading institutions is J. GOÑI GAZTAMBIDE, Historia de la bula de la cruzada en España, Vitoria 1958. Crusading, in this study, is defined as an indulgenced holy war. Erdmann, to his credit, does use the term “crusade” before crusading had acquired an institutional structure, but he does not develop his “event-first” version of crusading into a coherent thesis (CHEVEDDEN, Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade [as in note 40], 122-36). 42 BYSTED (as in note 13), 10. 272 Paul E. Chevedden there were no French knights, there would still be Crusades 43. A system of recruiting devices and a network of signs has mistakenly been identified as the essence of the crusading movement. By singling out the accidents of crusading, historians have neglected its essence. Historically, the so-called “key elements” of crusading – the ecclesiastical apparatus of indulgence, vow, and Cross – are the products, not the foundation, of crusading44. The foundation of the Crusade is contained, not in the indulgence, but in a common cause to undo Muslim occupation of Christian territories and to rebuild a subjugated Church45. The Law of Hysteron Proteron For many historians, the institutional character of the Crusade has obscured the Crusade. That is why in the field of Crusade studies it is possible to entertain an implausible scenario that places the emergence of crusading institutions anachronistically before the emergence of actual crusading. As a result, the effect (crusading institutions) is put before the cause (crusading). The Crusade, it is assumed, found its archetypal institutions before crusading came into being. These institutions supposedly arose prior to crusading and operated quite independently of crusading. Accordingly, “the first papal crusading indulgence whose text we pos- 43 Erdmann and other Crusade historians lay stress on the outer stimuli of the Crusades, rather than on the structure as a whole and its internal dynamics. See especially ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), passim; Eng. trans., passim; and BRUNDAGE, Medieval Canon Law (as in note 4), passim. Crusade scholarship in general has emphasized the institutional aspects of the enterprise. 44 The three elements of indulgence, vow, and Cross, as well as the union of war and pilgrimage, papal authorization, and crusading privileges, are considered to be the “signs” that a Crusade has come into being (J. RILEY-SMITH, What Were the Crusades? London 11977, 12-15, 34-41, 54-62; ID., What Were the Crusades? San Francisco 32002, 2-8, 27-35, 53-64, 66-68). Norman Housley narrows these elements to the triad of indulgence, vow, and Cross (N. HOUSLEY, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400-1536, Oxford 2002, 12), but he speaks of “the full apparatus of the crusade”, which presumably refers to more than just the three “key elements” of indulgence, vow, and Cross (N. HOUSLEY, Crusades against Christians: Their Origins and Early Development c.1000-1216, in: Th. F. MADDEN (ed.), The Crusades: The Essential Readings, Oxford 2002, 71-97, 84, 97. 45 See below notes 50 and 51 and text. For an interpretation of the Crusade which attempts to anchor the movement in the historical evidence and the changes taking place in the Mediterranean world, see CHEVEDDEN, Canon 2 (as in note 2); ID., Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade (as in note 40). The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 273 sess”46 was issued more than three decades prior to Urban II’s call to arms in 1095, but the conventional judgment that the Crusades began in 1095 remains unassailable. The law of hysteron proteron, it seems, directed the course of the Crusade. The evidence for the pre-1095 Crusade indulgence and the pre-1095 crusading vow indicates that prior to 1095 Christian warriors willing to participate in the recovery of lands that Christendom had lost to Islam benefited from the same spiritual rewards and were bound by the same mutual promises as those that answered Urban’s call to march on Jerusalem to liberate the Eastern Church. Prior to 1095, the power of the actual enterprise of crusading had led to the formation of crusading institutions by means of which the Crusade was perpetuated and advanced. Engendered by action, crusading was bolstered by spiritual benefits (the indulgence) and mutual promises (the crusading vow). The fundamental novelty in 1095 was not the indulgence, the vow, and the Cross. The fundamental novelty in 1095 was that the ecclesiastical apparatus related to crusading in the western Mediterranean was adopted, adapted, and applied to the struggle against Islam in the eastern Mediterranean. From Holy War to Crusade Yet what was the fundamental novelty that produced the Crusade and when did crusading come into being? The principal step by which crusading became differentiated from the holy wars that preceded it was the liberation of the Church from secular control and the rise of the first panEuropean polity – the Church – under papal leadership. The factor that turned Christian holy war into Crusade was not “war-pilgrimage” (Erdmann), nor was it the special status of Jerusalem and its holy places (Flori), it was the rise of the papacy to a position of leadership and independence in Western Christendom resulting from “the most general and intensive social earthquake Europe has ever seen” 47 – the Papal Revolution. The independence and leadership of the Church, however, did not emerge fullblown, but rather grew into existence. For that reason, crusading did not begin with a loud roar or a “Big Bang”. Nor was the start of the Crusade 46 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 125; Eng. trans., 138; PAULUS (as in note 11), 1: 134-35, 372 n. 3. Erdmann is referring to the Crusade indulgence promulgated by Pope Alexander II (1061-73) in c. 1063 in connection with the expedition that captured Barbastro in 1064. See below note 56 and text. 47 E. ROSENSTOCK-HUESSY, Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man, New York 1938; repr. Providence (RI) 1993, 530. 274 Paul E. Chevedden experienced as a sudden and dramatic turning point48. It began with a low moan, with fighting on a very narrow front and with a very limited number 48 Only after the start of the Crusade was this event seen as a sudden and dramatic turning point. For example, the Norman historians, who wrote of the Norman conquest of Sicily, came to “represent the Sicilian undertaking as a crusade from the first” (ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke [as in note 5], 121; Eng. trans., 133). Likewise, Pope Urban II came to view the Norman war in Sicily as a decisive turning point in the history of Christendom because it ushered in a new age. For Urban, the new beginning of history did not start with the Jerusalem Crusade. It started with the Norman conquest of Sicily, which achieved the decisive breakthrough that led to the restoration of “the ancient status of the Holy Church”. Urban’s letter to Bishop Gerland of Agrigento (d. 1101) of 10 October 1098 makes clear his view: Omnipotentis Dei dispositione mutantur tempora, transferuntur regna. Hinc est quod magni quondam nominis nationes detritas et depressas, viles vero atque exiguas non numquam legimus exaltatas; hinc est quod in quibusdam regionibus christiani nominis potestatem paganorum feritas occupavit, in quibusdam iterum paganorum tyrannidem christiane potentie dignitas conculcavit, sicut nostris temporibus gloriosissimorum principum Roberti ducis et Rogerii comitis fortitudine superne dignationis miseratio omnem Sarracenorum violentiam in Sycilia insula expugnavit et antiquum Ecclesie sancte statum pro voluntatis sue beneplacito reparavit (By the arrangement of Almighty God, times change, kingdoms exchange fates. Hence, have we never read of nations that were once of great repute being diminished and laid low and of lowly and weak nations being exalted? This is because in certain regions of Christian name the savageness of pagans took control. In some of these, the honor of Christian power once more treads underfoot the tyranny of the pagans, just as in our time, by the mercy of divine favor, the most glorious princes Duke Robert and Count Roger, through their courage, have won out over all the violence of the Saracens in the island of Sicily and have restored the ancient status of the Holy Church in accordance with God’s will and gracious purpose); JL 5710; PL 151: 510A-B; P. F. KEHR et al. (eds.), Italia pontificia, sive, Repertorium privilegiorum et litterarum a Romanis pontificibus ante annum MCLXXXXVIII Italiae ecclesiis monasteriis civitatibus singulisque personis concessorum, 10 vols., Berlin 19061975, 10: 264, no. 9; Libellus de successione, ed. P. COLLURA, Le più antiche carte dell’Archivio Capitolare di Agrigento (1092-1282), Palermo 1961 (= Documenti per servire alla storia di Sicilia, seria Ia t. 25), Agrigento, 22. I thank Donald J. Kagay for translating this decree. Pope Urban conceived of the Crusades as part of an interconnected range of events that spanned the course of Christian history. He divided Christian history into four stages: (1) the era of Christian antiquity; (2) the era of Islamic ascendancy when vast portions of Christendom, in the East as well as in the West, were incorporated into the Dār al-Islām ; (3) a new era “in our time” (nostris temporibus) in which the Christian people (populus christianus), “led by the princes chosen by God”, were undoing Islamic domination and ushering into form the final era (4) in which “the Holy Church” would be restored to its “ancient status” (antiquum ecclesie sancte statum … reparavit). Urban not only believed that the Crusades were the culmination of a very long historical process but he also marked out the Norman conquest of Sicily as the beginning of the new era associated with crusading. On Urban’s biblically-based concept of translatio regni (“transfer of power”) and his four-fold schema of Christian history, see BECKER, Urban II (as in note 19), 341, 353-61; ID., Urbain The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 275 of armed forces, and built gradually to a roar. Since crusading did not emerge to the accompaniment of pipes and drums in a display reminiscent of the Battle of Waterloo, its novelty was hardly capable of being perceived at first. Yet mighty things grow from small beginnings. Once the papacy began promoting the recovery of the lost lands of Christendom from an independently powerful position, new hopes, new dreams, new plans, new institutional structures, and new political associations came into being that cemented crusading into the consciousness of Latin Christendom. Of course, it would be more satisfying if crusading had emerged as a mass movement with tens of thousands of participants, the way it is traditionally depicted. But crusading did not begin with a grand announcement or a world-shaking event. It had an evolutionary history that began with the Norman conquest of Islamic Sicily (1061-91). The act by which the Church first asserted itself as an independent political entity was the same act by which the Church instituted the Crusades: the Norman-papal alliance initiated at the Council of Melfi in 1059. This alliance laid the foundations for a new form of government in the Latin West, a “federal” Christendom, “ruled jointly by a single unified ecclesiastical hierarchy and a multiplicity of secular polities” 49. It also laid the foundations for the reconquest of Sicily. At this Church council, the key political issue of the crusading movement was introduced. Looked at superficially, the issue pertained to the jurisdiction of Christendom over Sicily. Yet what was really in question was the rightful jurisdiction of Christendom over territory taken from it by Islam. On this issue there was no debate; Christendom was to be free (libertas ecclesiae). What we see at Melfi is the de facto use of the crusading principle before a theoretical formulation had emerged to give voice to this principle. Libertas ecclesiae (“Freedom of the Church”) had yet to be set forth in a definite and systematic way, as it was by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, or even to be established as a legal or a formal principle. But libertas ecclesiae was clearly implied at Melfi; Sicily was to be liberated from foreign domination and the Church II et l’Orient, in: S. PALESE - G. LOCATELLI (eds.), Il Concilio di Bari del 1098: Atti del Convegno Storico Internazionale e celebrazioni del IX Centenario del Concilio, Bari 1999, 123-44, 135-36; I. H. RINGEL, Ipse transfert regna et mutat tempora. Bemerkungen zur Herkunft von Dan. 2,21 bei Urban II, in: E.-D. HEHL - H. SEIBERT - F. STAAB (eds.), Deus qui mutat tempora: Menschen und Institutionen im Wandel des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Alfons Becker zu seinem fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag, Sigmaringen 1987, 137-56. 49 H. J. BERMAN, Law and Revolution, II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition, Cambridge (MA) 2003, 127. 276 Paul E. Chevedden was to be restored. The oath of Robert Guiscard (c. 1016-1085) to Pope Nicholas II (1058-61) at the Council of Melfi (23 August 1059) in effect declared Islamic jurisdiction over Sicily to be abolished and the jurisdiction of Christendom reborn50. This declaration, implicit or otherwise, was revolutionary in its implications. It introduced the new tenets that would fuel the Crusade: (1) the public liberation of the Church from Islamic domination (libertas ecclesiae); and, (2) the rightful jurisdiction of Christendom over territory taken from it by Islam51. These two tenets linked the religious and secular spheres of Western Christendom in a common enter- 50 The text of the oath of 1059 is published in P. FABRE - L. DUCHESNE (eds.), Le Liber Censuum de l’Eglise Romaine, 3 vols., Paris 1889-1952), 1: 422, with English translations in B. TIERNEY, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300: With Selected Documents, Toronto 1988, 44, and G. A. LOUD, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest, Harlow (England) 2000, 188-89. On the Council of Melfi and the 1059 oath, see WILLIAM OF APULIA, La geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. M. MATHIEU, Palermo 1961 (= Istituto siciliano di studi bizantini e neoellenici, Testi e monumenti, Testi 4), 154 (II.400-05); ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 121; Eng. trans., 133; J. DEÉR, Papsttum und Normannen. Untersuchungen zu ihren lehnsrechtlichen und kirchenpolitischen Beziehungen, Köln 1972 (= SQWKF 1), 63-67; I. S. ROBINSON, The Papacy, 10731198: Continuity and Innovation, Cambridge 1990, 369-70; LOUD, Robert Guiscard, 18694; ID., The Papacy and the Rulers of Southern Italy, 1058-1198, in: G. A. LOUD - A. METCALFE (eds.), The Society of Norman Italy, Leiden 2002, 151-84, 153-58; H. J. BERMAN, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, Cambridge (MA) 1983, 411-12; H. HOUBEN, Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West, Cambridge 2002, 10; P. E. CHEVEDDEN, The Council of Melfi (1059) and the Origin of the Crusades (forthcoming). 51 The Norman historians of the conquest of Sicily articulate these two tenets in AMATUS OF MONTECASSINO, Storia de’ Normanni di Amato di Montecassino volgarizzata in antico francese, ed. V. DE BARTHOLOMAEIS, Rome 1935 (= FSI; Scrittori, secolo XI, no. 76), 231 (V.9), 234 (V.12), 276 (VI.14), 282 (VI.19), 321 (VII.27); trans. P. N. DUNBAR as The History of the Normans, rev. G. A. LOUD, Woodbridge (Suffolk) – Rochester (NY) 2004, 136-38, 156, 158, 179; GEOFFREY MALATERRA, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis fratris eius, ed. E. PONTIERI, Bologna 1927-1928 (= RIS 5/1, fasc. 211, 218-219), 29 (II.1), 44-45 (II.33), 53 (II.45), 68 (III.19), 77 (III.32), 88-89 (IV.7); trans. K. B. WOLF as The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of his Brother Duke Robert Guiscard, Ann Arbor (MI) 2005, 85-86, 111, 125, 149, 163, 182, 183; WILLIAM OF APULIA (as in note 50), 174 (III.194-203), 182 (III.332-36). These historians provide ample evidence for determining the crusading objectives of the Normans. In Erdmann’s words, these objectives were “that the Christians inhabiting the island should cease to live in servitude, that Christianity should govern there, and that Christian observance should be restored to fitting splendor” (ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke [as in note 5], 122; Eng. trans. 134). The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 277 prise: the reconquest of former Christian territory and the assimilation of this territory back into Christendom. Once the recovery of the lost lands of Christendom became a stated objective of a newly emancipated papacy, attempts to achieve this political purpose were put into effect and crusading was born. Norman efforts in Sicily were soon emulated in Spain where an Aragonese-papal alliance, similar to the Norman-papal alliance, initiated a Franco-Catalan Crusade that was led by a papal army of Italo-Norman knights under the command of the Norman adventurer Robert Crispin. In 1064, this Crusade captured Barbastro, an important border stronghold guarding Islamic Zaragoza and the Ebro plain52. A series of papal letters issued by Pope Alexander II (1061-73) have been associated with this Crusade. All of these letters are 52 On the Barbastro Crusade, see AMATUS (as in note 51), 13-15 (I.5-7); Eng. trans., 4647; ‘Alī Ibn Bassām al-Shantarīnī, al-Dhakhīrah fī maḥāsin ahl al-jazīrah, ed. I.‘ABBĀS, Beirut 1975-79, I, pt. 3, 179-90 (which preserves Ibn Ḥayyān’s account of the siege); Abū ‘Ubayd ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Bakrī, Jughrāfiyat al-Andalus wa-Ūrūbbā, min Kitāb almasālik wa-al-mamālik, ed. A. AL-ḤAJJĪ (Beirut, 1968), 92-95; Muḥammad b. ‘Abd Allāh alḤimyarī, La péninsule Ibérique au Moyen-Âge d’apès le Kitāb ar-Rawḍ al-mi‘ṭār fī ḫabar alaḳtār d’Ibn ‘Abd al-Mun‘im al-Ḥimyarī, ed. É. LÉVI-PROVENÇAL, Leiden 1938, 39-41; R. DOZY, Recherches sur l’histoire et la littérature de l’Espagne pendant le moyen âge, 3rd ed., Leiden 1881, 2: 332-53; P. BOISSONNADE, Cluny, la papauté et la première grande croisade internationale contre les Sarrasins d’Espagne: Barbastro (1064-1065), in: RQSc 117 (1932) 257-301; J. BOSCH VILÁ, Al-Bakrī: Dos fragmentos sobre Barbastro en el “Bayān al-Mugrib” de Ibn ‘Iḏārī y en el “Rawḍ al-Mi‘ṭār” del Ḥimyarī, in: EEMCA 3 (1947-48) 242-61; M. DEe e FOURNEAUX, Les Français en Espagne aux XI et XII siècles, Paris 1949, 131-35; GOÑI GAZTAMBIDE (as in note 41), 49-52; A. NOTH, Heiliger Krieg und Heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum: Beiträge zur Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Bonn 1966, 109-111; A. TURK, El reino de Zaragoza en el siglo XI de Cristo (V de la Hégira), Madrid 1978, 87-100; A. UBIETO, Historia de Aragón: La formación territorial, Zaragoza 1981, 5466; M. J. VIGUERA, Aragón musulman, Zaragoza 1981, 191-194; A. FERREIRO, The Siege of Barbastro, 1064-65: A Reassessment, in: Journal of Medieval History 9 (June 1983) 129-44; G. PETTI BALBI, Lotte antisaracene e “militia Christi”, in: “Militia Christi” e crociata nei secoli XI-XIII: atti della undecima Settimana internazionale di studio: Mendola, 28 agosto - 1 settembre 1989, Milan 1992, 519-45, 526-28; M. MARÍN, Crusaders in the Muslim West: The View of Arab Writers, Maghreb Review [Majallat al-Maghrib] 17, nos. 1-2 (1992) 95102; J. FLORI, Réforme, reconquista, croisade (l’idée de reconquête dans la correspondance pontificale d’Alexandre II à Urbain II), in: ID., (ed.), Croisade et chevalerie: XIe-XIIe siècles, Brussels 1998 (= Bibliothèque du Moyen Age 12), 53-59; I D., De Barbastro à Jérusalem [as in note 8], 129-35, 146; ID., La Guerre sainte (as in note 22), 277-84; P. SÉNAC, La frontière et les hommes, VIIIe-XIIe siècle: Le peuplement musulman au nord de l’Ebre et les débuts de la reconquête aragonaise, Paris 2000, 391-95; J. F. O’CALLAGHAN, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain, Philadelphia 2003, 24-27; CHEVEDDEN, Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade (as in note 40), 134-35. 278 Paul E. Chevedden undated, but they have been attributed to the year 1063. Three of the letters praise the clergy and secular rulers of southern France and Spain for protecting the Jews in their realms, “so that they may not be killed by those who are setting out for [Islamic] Spain against the Saracens” 53. A fourth letter, Eos qui in Ispaniam, offers a plenary indulgence to the participants in this Crusade. “The First Papal Crusading Indulgence” Erdmann declared Alexander II’s indulgence to be “the first papal crusading indulgence whose text we possess” 54. It was addressed to the clerus Vulturnensis. What clergy received this letter? The recipients were probably the clergy of the bishopric of Volturara Appula, located in the province of Foggia in the Apulia region of southeast Italy55. In this letter, Alexander 53 Placuit nobic sermo quem nuper de vobis audivimus, quomodo tutati estis Judaeos qui inter vos habitant, ne interimerentur ab illis qui contra Sarracenos in Hispaniam proficiscebantur, Alexander II to the bishops of Spain and southern France, c. 1063, S. SIMONSOHN, The Apostolic See and the Jews, Documents: 492-1404, Toronto 1988 (= STPIMS 94), 35, no. 37; trans. O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 25. See also the letter of Alexander II to Archbishop Wifred of Narbonne and the letter to Viscount Berengar of Narbonne (ibid., 35-36, nos. 36 and 38); ID., The Apostolic See and the Jews: History, Toronto 1991 (= STPIMS 109), 43. 54 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 125; Eng. trans., 138. 55 The bishopric of Volturara Appula was designated in Latin as Vulturnensis, Wiltinensis, or Butunensis. On this bishopric, see KEHR et al. (eds.), Italia pontificia (as in note 48), 9: 150; H.-W. KLEWITZ, Studien über die Wiederherstellung der römischen Kirche in Süditalien durch das Reformpapsttum, QFIAB 25 (1933-34), 105-57, 107 and n. 5; D. JASPER, Das Papstwahldekret von 1059: Überlieferung und Textgestalt, Sigmaringen 1986 (= BGQMA 12), 26, 115; R. SOMERVILLE, Papal Excerpts in Arsenal MS 713B: Alexander II and Urban II, in: P. LANDAU - J. MUELLER (eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Munich, 13-18 July 1992, Città del Vaticano 1997 (= MIC.S 10), 169-84, 183-84. The clerus Vulturnenis of Alexander II’s bull of indulgence has been the subject of debate for more than a century. Paul Ewald suggests that the clergy was from Castel Volturno in Campania, as does Prosper Boissonnade and Ramón Menéndez Pidal (P. EWALD , Die Papstbriefe der brittishchen Sammlung, in: NA 5 [1880] 338-39, Epist. 58; BOISSONNADE [as in note 52], 271; R. MENÉNDEZ PIDAL, La España del Cid, 5th ed., 2 vols., Madrid 1956 [= Obras completas 6-7], 1: 147 n. 2). Paul Kehr assumes the clergy to be from a French or Spanish bishopric (KEHR et al. [eds.], Italia pontificia [as in note 48], 8: 236-37: de ecclesia quadam Galliae aut Hispaniae agi videtur). Erdmann is in basic agreement with Kehr. He considers the castle of Volturno, called Castellum maris (ad Vulturnum) in the Middle Ages, to be too small to receive “an indulgence for the participants in the Spanish campaign”, and Michel Villey vehemently concurs. Erdmann suggests that Vulturnensis “must rather denote a bishopric”. He considers both Volterra and Voltu- The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 279 II grants a remission of penance and a remission of sins to all those who have made the decision to go to Islamic Spain and fight Muslims there. The full text reads: To the clergy of Volturara Appula (clero Vulturnensi). With paternal affection we exhort those who have resolved to go to Islamic Spain (Ispaniam) that they take the greatest care to complete that task which at God’s prompting they have made up their minds to accomplish. Let each one [going to Islamic Spain] confess, according to the character of his sins, to his bishop or spiritual father, and let the confessor impose a suitable penance upon him, lest the Devil be able to accuse him of impenitence. We, however, by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, following them with our prayers, both relieve them of their penance and grant them remission of sins56. rara [Appula] as possible matches for Vulturnensis, but he concludes that “it is surely more probable that the name is garbled and that a French bishopric was meant” (ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke [as in note 5]; 125 and n. 71; Eng. trans., 138 and n. 71; M. VILLEY, La croisade: Essai sur la formation d’une théorie juridique, Paris 1942 [= EEMA 6], 70 n. 175). Walther Holtzmann recommends Volturara Appula (KEHR et al. [eds.], Italia pontificia [as in note 48], 9: 150). José Goñi Gaztambide maintains that Vulturnensis cannot be identified for certain (GOÑI GAZTAMBIDE [as in note 41], 50). James Brundage assumes it to be Volturno, which must be the castle of Volturno (Castel Volturno) (BRUNDAGE, Medieval Canon Law [as in note 4], 24). Marcus Bull considers Castel Volturno “much more plausible” than other choices, but Alberto Ferreiro concurs with Goñi Gaztambide that the “exact identity of Vulturnensis is unclear” (M. G. BULL, Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony, c. 970-c. 1130, Oxford 1993, 75; FERREIRO, Siege of Barbastro [as in note 52], 132). John Cowdrey finds Volterra “attractive, since the names Vulternensis, Wlturnensis, and Vulturnensis occur”, and Jean Flori, who once favored Castel Volturno, now agrees with Cowdrey (H. E. J. COWDREY, Pope Gregory VII and the Bearing of Arms, in: B. Z. KEDAR - J. RILEY-SMITH - R. H IESTAND [eds.], Montjoie: Studies in Crusade History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, Aldershot [Hampshire] 1997, 21-35, 28 n. 31; FLORI, Réforme [as in note 52], 55; ID., De Barbastro à Jérusalem [as in note 8], 134; ID., La Guerre sainte [as in note 22], 281). Alfons Becker suggests Urgell (Urgellensis) because Count Ermengol III of Urgell participated in the Barbastro Crusade (BECKER, Urban II [as in note 19], 285-86). 56 Clero Vulturnensi. Eos, qui in Ispaniam proficisci destinarunt, paterna karitate hortamur, ut, que divinitus admoniti cogitaverunt ad effectum perducere, summa cum sollicitudine procurent; qui iuxta qualitatem peccaminum suorum unusquisque suo episcopo vel spirituali patri confiteatur, eisque, ne diabolus accusare de inpenitentia possit, modus penitentiae imponatur. Nos vero auctoritate sanctorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli et penitentiam eis levamus et remissionem peccatorum facimus, oratione prosequentes, S. LOEWENFELD (ed.), Epistolae pontificum Romanorum ineditae, Leipzig 1885; repr. Graz 1959, 43, no. 82. For other translations of this bull, see BRUNDAGE, Medieval Canon Law (as in note 4), 24; BULL, Knightly Piety (as in note 55), 73. I thank Robert I Burns, S.J., and Donald J. Kagay for assistance in translating this decree. 280 Paul E. Chevedden The text links papal incitement (hortamur) to an action that God himself has prompted or provoked (que divinitus admoniti cogitaverunt). At God’s prompting (divinitus admoniti), Christian warriors have undertaken a task that is recognized as having been initiated by God. This letter clearly acknowledges that the task to which those who have resolved to go to Islamic Spain … have made up their minds to accomplish comes from God. John Cowdrey, however, describes the phrase que divinitus admoniti cogitaverunt as “restrained” and states that “neither it nor anything else in the fragment [i.e., the bull of indulgence] necessarily implies a concept of divinely inspired holy war which of itself attracted spiritual benefits”. This argument seems to be undercut by Cowdrey’s own insistence that the phrase ne diabolus accusare de inpenitentia possit (lest the Devil be able to accuse him of impenitence) suggests “a risk of imminent death which fits warfare more than pilgrimage”. Cowdrey’s remarks attempt to undermine the thesis of Marcus Bull that this letter of indulgence concerns a pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostela, not a military expedition. But Cowdrey’s own assessment regarding this letter is hesitant and equivocal: “It is, perhaps, wise to leave open the question of warfare or pilgrimage but with a presumption remaining that Alexander had in mind the former” 57. Warfare, not pilgrimage, was clearly the purpose of those headed for Islamic Spain. The letter identifies their destination as Ispania, or Islamic Spain. This term was frequently used at this time to refer to that part of the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic rule, not the entire peninsula58. Hence, there is no question that this bull concerns a military expedition against 57 COWDREY, Bearing of Arms (as in note 55), 28 n. 31; BULL, Knightly Piety (as in note 55), 72-78. Cowdrey can also be decisive and unequivocal on this issue. “Those intending to go to Spain” did so, says Cowdrey, “surely in order to fight the Saracens” (H. E. J. COWDREY, The Reform Papacy and the Origin of the Crusades, in: A. VAUCHEZ [ed.], Le Concile de Clermont de 1095 et l’appel à la croisade: Actes du Colloque universitaire international de Clermont-Ferrand [23-25 juin 1995] organisé et publié avec le concours du Conseil régional d’Auvergne, Rome 1997, 65-83, 77). Bull’s thesis is endorsed by Jonathan Riley-Smith but roundly rejected by Jean Flori (RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders [as in note 6], 49; FLORI, Réforme [as in note 52], 54-56; ID., La Guerre sainte [as in note 22], 282). 58 King Sancho II of Castile/León (1065-1072), for example, was given the title dominator Hyspanie (“lord of Islamic Spain”) by the anonymous author of the Historia Roderici, and the term Hispania was even used to designate regions outside of Spain that were under Islamic rule. See S. BARTON - R. FLETCHER (trans.), The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest, Manchester 2000, 100 n. 7; RAIMUNDUS DE AGILES, Le “Liber” de Raymond d’Aguilers, ed. J. H. H UGH - L. L. HILL, Paris 1969 (= DRHC 9), 13, 50; trans. J. H. HUGH - L. L. HILL as Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem, Philadelphia 1968 (= Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 71), 33. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 281 Muslims in Spain. Cowdrey is clearly mistaken in his judgment regarding the expression que divinitus admoniti cogitaverunt as being “restrained”. To the contrary, it is a forceful declaration of God’s support for a military expedition against Muslims in Spain, and this strong endorsement for military action lies at the heart of this Crusade bull. The fact that this expedition is identified as being set in motion at God’s prompting (divinitus admoniti) means that it was supported actively as a duty one ought to undertake. The legitimating principle of the Crusade was the “will of God”, and Alexander II distinctly expresses this principle in the phrase divinitus admoniti. Far from being “restrained”, divinitus admoniti is an exhortation to action, and the pope here is acting as a catalyst to promote a divinely-supported activity by offering spiritual rewards, specifically a remission of the penance imposed upon the combatants by their confessors and a full and complete remission of sins. This grant of a full remission of both penances and sins was the first Crusade indulgence59. Unlike John VIII’s holy war indulgence, this grant of indulgence conferred spiritual rewards upon those that fought in defense of the faith and survived, as well as upon those that died. The Crusade indulgence is described by Jacques de Vitry (c. 1180-1240) as releasing the recipients from all the penitence enjoined upon them and freeing them from venial and also mortal sins and from the punishment for their sins in this world and the punishment of purgatory in the next, so that they are safe from the tortures of hell, in the glory and honour of being crowned in eternal beatitude60. The washing away of all sins and the acquisition of heavenly rewards is obtained by the Crusade indulgence. For those who die on Crusade, the benefits are obtained immediately. For those who fight and 59 According to Cowdrey, Alexander II freed Christian warriors only from penances that had been “freshly imposed in prospect of a dangerous campaign” in Spain, whereas Urban II in 1095 freed Christian warriors headed for Jerusalem of their “long-accumulated penances”, i.e., all of their penances (COWDREY, Reform Papacy [as in note 57], 77). But Alexander II also granted to the Crusaders headed for Spain remission of their sins, and this remission is contingent upon the Crusades being delivered from all of sin’s penal consequences, including penances. There is little doubt therefore that Alexander II granted a full remission of both penances and sins. 60 Unde et crucesignati qui vere contriti et confessi ad Dei servitium accinguntur, dun in Christi servitio moriuntur, vere martires reputantur, liberati a peccatis venialibus simul et mortalibus, ab omni penitentia sibi iniuncta, absoluti a pena peccatorum in hoc seculo, a pena purgatorii in alio, securi a tormentis gehenne, gloria et honore coronandi in eterna beatitudine, JACQUES DE VITRY, Sermo 1, in: C. T. M AIER, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross, Cambridge 2000, 112-13. 282 Paul E. Chevedden survive, full remission of all the penitence enjoined upon them and full remission of all sins is obtained here and now, and eternal life in the future, provided they show sorrow for their sins and avoid sinning in the future61. These same spiritual rewards were later offered by Pope Urban II. After making a careful assessment of all of Urban II’s statements regarding the indulgence issued at the Council of Clermont, Bysted concludes that the pope granted to those that survived the Jerusalem Crusade “the remission of sins and the remission of penance” and to those that gave their lives “the remission of sins and eternal life” 62. Urban, however, was no innovator. He modeled his Clermont indulgence on the indulgenced grants of Alexander II. In the words of Franco Cardini, “the papal bull sanctioning the [Barbastro] campaign, issued by Pope Alexander II, became the model for subsequent pontifical documents which came to constitute the canon law of the crusades: the bull granted as an indulgence remission of sins to anyone participating in the enterprise” 63. At the very same time that Alexander II granted a plenary indulgence to Christian warriors setting off on Crusade to Spain, he granted the same indulgence to Normans who were crusading in Sicily. The text of the Sicilian indulgence does not survive, but an account of it is found in Geoffrey Malaterra’s De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis fratris eius (“Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily, and of Robert Guiscard his Brother”). He states that the pope [Alexander II] … sent both his apostolic blessing and – by the powers vested in him – release from their sins (if, repenting, they guarded against sinning in the future) to the count and to all others who were helping him to win Sicily from the pagans and to hold it forever in the faith of Christ. The pope also sent a banner from the Roman see, decorated with the seal of apostolic authority, under which the count and 61 Verus autem et fidelis amicus vester, si nunc ei in hac necessitate succurratis, in omnibus necessitatibus vestris succurreret vobis, conferendo vobis in presenti gratiam suam, omnium peccatorum integram resissionem, in foturo vero vitam eternam… . Hec enim plena et integra indulgentia quam vobis summus pontifex secundum claves a Deo sibi commissas concedit. Est quasi fons patens domui David in ablutionem [Za. xiii, 1] omnium peccatorum et in acquisitione celestium premiorum, ibid, 98-99, 112-13. The provision regarding repentance for sins and avoidance of sinning in the future is taken from the indulgence that Alexander II granted in 1063 to the Christian warriors active in the Sicilian Crusade (see below note 64). 62 BYSTED (as in note 13), 80. 63 F. CARDINI, Europa e Islam: storia di un malinteso, Rome 1999; trans. C. BEAMISH as Europe and Islam, Oxford 2001, 40. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 283 his men, trusting in the protection of St. Peter, were to rise up and wage war against the Saracens even more securely64. Paulus and Erdmann regard the absolutio sent by Alexander II to Sicily to be an indulgence similar to the Barbastro indulgence, and Horace Mann describes it as “a plenary indulgence” 65. The plenary indulgences granted by Alexander II have not been given the importance that they deserve. Bysted states that the Barbastro indulgence “seems to live up to the criteria of an actual indulgence”, but she does not assess the consequences of this fact for the history of the Crusade indulgence66. If it does “live up to the criteria of an actual indulgence”, it should be regarded as the first extant Crusade indulgence, as José Goñi Gaztambide claimed long ago. A handful of scholars have recognized the significance of the Barbastro indulgence67, but the vast majority has given it short shrift. Mayer, for example, recognizes it as “a perfectly genuine plenary indulgence” but qualifies this statement with a cautionary remark about its limited effects. According to him, “the full effects of the [Cru64 Apostolicus vero, plus de victoria a Deo de paganis concessa quam de sibi transmissis donariis gavisus, benedictionem apostolicam et, potestate qua utebatur, absolutionem de offensis, si resipiscentes in futurum caveant, comiti et omnibus, qui in lucranda de paganis Sicilia et lucratam in perpetuum ad fidem Christi retinendo auxiliarentur, mandat, vexillumque a Romana Sede, apostolica auctoritate consignatum; quo praemio, de beati Petri fisi praesidio, tutius in Saracenos debellaturi insurgerent, MALATERRA (as in note 51), 45 (II.33); Eng. trans. 111. Kenneth Baxter Wolf translates the phrase absolutionem de offensis as “absolution from sin”. This has been changed to “release from their sins”. 65 PAULUS (as in note 11), 1: 134; ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 125; Eng. trans., 139; H. K. MANN, The Lives of the Popes in the Middle Ages, vol. 6, The Popes of the Gregorian Renaissance: St. Leo IX to Honorius II, 1049-1130, pt. 1, 1049-1073, London 1925, 307. 66 BYSTED (as in note 13), 65, 69. In her discussion of the Barbastro indulgence, Bysted states that it was a “grant of full remission of penances”, or based on “the remission of penances”, or was “a unique example of remissions of penances” (ibid., 26, 67, 71), neglecting to take into account the “remission of sins” (remissionem peccatorum) granted by the pope. Following these pronouncements, Bysted refers to the Barbastro indulgence as “an indulgence of penances as well as the remission of sins” (ibid., 79). 67 PAULUS (as in note 11), 1: 134; ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 125; Eng. trans., 138-39; A. FLICHE, La réforme grégorienne et la reconquête chrétienne (1057-1123), Paris 1950 (= HE 8), 52; GOÑI GAZTAMBIDE [as in note 41], 50-51; O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 24-27. Jonathan Riley-Smith calls the Barbastro indulgence “the first indulgence for war” and notes that “Urban’s indulgence” was anticipated “over thirty years before [when] Pope Alexander II had granted a very similar one to Christian warriors in Spain, perhaps to those who were fighting to recover the town of Barbastro” (J. RILEY-SMITH, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, Philadelphia 1986, 5, 29). 284 Paul E. Chevedden sade] indulgence were felt only when it became linked with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem” 68. Cowdrey is willing to concede that “Pope Alexander II had attached a promise of spiritual benefits not unlike those associated with the First Crusade”, but these benefits, he asserts, “were on a smaller scale” 69. Brundage regards the Barbastro indulgence as “the earliest known papal grant of anything approaching an indulgence proper”, but, he argues, “the pope’s meaning is not quite clear”. The pope’s meaning, however, is all too clear, and Brundage simply ignores what is obvious in the indulgenced grant. In order to exclude the possibility of an indulgence, he disregards the pope’s words pertaining to the remission of sins (remissionem peccatorum) and defines an indulgence as an ecclesiastical grant that must refer explicitly to a remission of the temporal punishment due to sin. Because the precise formulation of a remission of the temporal punishment due to sin is missing from the text, Brundage concludes that the Barbastro indulgence is “a commutation of penance and not, technically, an indulgence” 70. Flori likewise regards the Barbastro indulgence as a commutation of penance71. Ian Robinson follows suit, but he cannot ignore the formula remissionem peccatorum facimus, so he refers to the indulgence as “a commutation of penance” that has “a remission of sins” attached to it72. Marcus Bull considers it to be neither an indulgence nor a commutation of penance, but rather “a straightforward exercise in pastoral advice”. His tortured explanation of remissionem peccatorum rings hollow: “The phrase ‘remissionem peccatorum’ can be interpreted, not as a declaration that journeying to Spain merited a full remission of all sins (which would have anticipated the later crusade indulgence), but as a guarantee that the spiritual benefits which could have been achieved through the performance of the particular penances originally imposed would also be secured by the alternative action (pilgrimage)” 73. Alexander II’s grant of indulgence to those headed to Islamic Spain on Crusade is one of the most detailed of all of the Crusade indulgences is- 68 MAYER, Crusades, 21988 (as in note 7), 26. H. E. J. COWDREY, The Genesis of the Crusades: The Springs of Western Ideas of Holy War, in: T. P. MURPHY (ed.), The Holy War, Columbus (OH) 1976, 9-32, 25. 70 BRUNDAGE , Medieval Canon Law (as in note 4), 24-25, 145-46; I D., Holy War and the Medieval Lawyers, in: M URPHY (as in note 69), 99-140, 119. 71 FLORI, Réforme (as in note 52), 56-57; ID., De Barbastro à Jérusalem (as in note 8), 134; ID., La Guerre sainte (as in note 22), 282. 72 ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 342. 73 BULL, Knightly Piety (as in note 55), 76. 69 The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 285 sued by the papacy in terms of sketching out the steps or stages of the indulgence rite. These steps are delineated as follows: (1) auricular confession (confiteatur); (2) the imposition of penance (penitentiae imponatur); (3) the remission of penance (penitentiam eis levamus); and, finally (4) the remission of sins (remissionem peccatorum). The Crusaders are called upon to receive the sacrament of Penance by confessing their sins to their bishop or spiritual father. The confessor is then enjoined to impose a suitable penance on the penitents. Once the requirement of sacramental confession is satisfied, the pope, by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, grants a plenary indulgence to all those who perform the prescribed work for gaining the indulgence – completing that task which at God’s prompting they have made up their minds to accomplish. The pope both relieve[s] them of their penance and grant[s] them remission of sins, thereby enabling the recipients of the Crusade indulgence to obtain eternal life, provided they sever all attachment to sin. Functioning even in a purely clerical capacity, the Church, by virtue of this indulgence, provided the moral impetus behind the crusading expedition. But the Church did more. Besides giving to the enterprise its essential rationale and motivational impulse, the institutional structures of the Church contributed invaluable organizational resources for the Crusade expedition. Bishop Peter of Volturara Appula and his clergy functioned as an important intermediary between the papacy and the papacy’s powerful allies, the Normans 74. The pope relied upon his bishops and the clergy not only to support and propagate the expedition to Spain, but also to recruit knights and soldiers for the Crusade. In 1074, Pope Alexander’s successor, Gregory VII (1073-85), followed the same practice and delegated recruitment for his Jerusalem Crusade to abbots and bishops75. As a letter granting indulgences, Eos qui in Ispaniam came directly into the hands of the knights and soldiers most likely to respond to a call for a Crusade in Spain. The enterprise to which they were being summoned had God’s approval (divinitus admoniti), and such an endorsement doubtless stirred up popular support for the Crusade. In the admonitions of the pope and in the exhortations of bishops and clerics was the voice of God 74 Bishop Peter of Volturara Appula (1050-59) was one of the signatories of the Papal Election Decree of 1059, with his name appearing as Petrus episcopus Uuturnensis. His name is also found on a canonization bull of 2 May 1050 for Bishop Gerhard of Toul (93594), inscribed as Petrus Butunensis (JASPER [as in note 55], 26, 115; KLEWITZ [as in note 55], 107 and n. 5). 75 H. E. J. COWDREY, Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085, Oxford 1998, 654. 286 Paul E. Chevedden calling Christian warriors to this crusading expedition. Long before Deus vult! (God wills it!) became the battle cry of the Crusade, the summoning will of God to join in Crusade was articulated by popes, bishops, and clerics. The Crusade Indulgences of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) As a catalyst for Crusade, the Crusade indulgence was unmatched. It was the one inducement that, according to Mayer, “put all the others in the shade” 76. Its appeal was too obvious for it not to be used by the successors of Pope Alexander II. Yet scholars have not credited the immediate successor of Alexander II, Pope Gregory VII, with having granted indulgences to promote crusading. Gottlob claims that Gregory VII disapproved of the institution of the indulgence and was adamantly against using indulgences to recruit Christian warriors77. Bysted contends that Gregory promised “eternal life or the remission of sins” to “both dead and surviving warriors”, but that his concept of spiritual reward was not based on the indulgence78. Yet the ambiguity that seems to cloud the spiritual reward, or rewards, offered by Gregory VII appears to be an ambiguity of language or terminology, rather than an ambiguity of thought. Behind the various expressions for spiritual rewards that are found in Gregory’s letters lie real similarities of thought. At the very least, it must be admitted that promises of eternal life and the remission of sins are entirely consistent with indulgences. Another fact that is important to emphasize it that the Crusade indulgence was still in its infancy when Gregory issued his crusading appeals, and there was as yet no established formula for it. A number of expressions could have been used to refer to the Crusade indulgence. Lastly, even as the Crusade indulgence developed and took on a standardized formula during the course of the twelfth century, this formula came in two forms: a long version and a short version. The short version was based on the phrase, in remissionem peccatorum iniungimus (we enjoin, for the remission of sins)79. Instead of the successive steps of the indulgence rite being marked out, as we see in Alexander II’s indulgenced grant for Spain, the short version of the indulgence formula narrows its attention to the ultimate achievement of the indulgence: “the remission of sins”, or, 76 MAYER, Crusades, 21988 (as in note 7), 23. GOTTLOB (as in note 12), 46-60. 78 BYSTED (as in note 13), 65-71. 79 Ibid., 183, 188-90; P AULUS (as in note 11), 1: 85-93. 77 The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 287 what was generally understood by this expression, the deliverance from sin’s penal consequences. Similarly, Gregory’s crusading letters might have used an abbreviated formula for the indulgence that constricted its focus to a single action of the indulgence rite: the remission of sins or the conferral of an eternal reward. Gregory VII supported two Crusades: a Jerusalem Crusade that never came to fruition and the Sicilian Crusade (1059-91). In response to the Saljuq invasion of the Byzantine Empire following the battle of Manzikert in 1071, the pope, in 1074, tried to initiate a counteroffensive against the Muslim invaders and mount a rescue of the Byzantine Empire. Gregory first approached Count William I of Upper Burgundy (Franche-Comté) with the idea of an eastern expedition in February of 107480. In March, he followed this up with a general crusading summons to all Christians 81. Recruitment proved difficult. Relations between Gregory and Robert Guiscard had gone awry. Norman encroachments into the Campagna and the Abruzzi to which the papacy held claim provoked a crisis. When attempts at face-to-face negotiations between Guiscard and the pope ended in failure, Gregory sought to drive a wedge between Guiscard and other Norman rulers in order to stop Norman depredations against papal territories. Gregory’s proposed Crusade was an attempt to exert further pressure on Gusicard. The assembled troops from northern Italy and southern France were first to win over Guiscard to righteousness by a show of force and then to cross to Constantinople to bring aid to Christians who are grievously afflicted by the most frequent ravagings of the Saracens and who are avidly imploring us to extend them our helping hand. Already by April the plan had run into trouble. Duke Godfrey of Lorraine along with knights that he had promised failed to appear 82. The brother of the Empress-mother Agnes of Germany, Count William VI of Poitou (Duke William VIII of 80 Letter of Gregory VII to Count William I of Burgundy, 2 February 1074, GREGORY VII, Das Register Gregors VII, ed. E. CASPAR, Berlin 1955 (= MGH.ES 2), 69-71, no. 1.46; trans. H. E. J. COWDREY as The Register of Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085: An English Translation, Oxford 2002, 50-51, no. 1.46; E. EMERTON (trans.), The Correspondence of Pope Gregory VII: Selected Letters from the Registrum, New York 1932 (= RoC 14), 2223. 81 Letter of Gregory VII to all who are willing to defend the Christian faith, 1 March 1074, Register (as in note 80), 75-76, no. 1.49; Register (trans.), 54-55, no. 1.49; Correspondence, 25-26. 82 Letter of Gregory VII to Duke Godfrey IV of Loraine reproving him for failing to send knights, 7 April 1074, Register (as in note 80), 103-04, no. 1.72; Register (trans.), 7576, no. 1.72. 288 Paul E. Chevedden Aquitaine [c.1024-86]), responded favorably to the pope’s appeal, but by early September the expedition was put on temporary hold, due, as the pope explains, to a rumor that the Saljuqs had been driven back83. In December, plans for a Crusade were energetically revived. On 7 December, Gregory wrote to King Henry IV of Germany to enlist his support in a campaign that would attempt to reach Jerusalem under the pope’s leadership84. On 16 December, Gregory issued a general crusading summons to all Christians, especially those beyond the Alps85. On the same day, or soon afterwards, he wrote to Countess Matilda of Tuscany (1046-1115) and asked if she would join him and the Empress Agnes on the Crusade86. A month later, in January of 1075, a dejected Gregory sent a letter to Abbot Hugh of Cluny telling him that his Crusade plan had failed to materialize87. As an incentive to heed his crusading appeals, Gregory issued promises of spiritual rewards. To Count William of Upper Burgundy, he granted a double reward; nay, one that is many times as great that Peter and Paul the princes of the apostles will give [him] and all who shall labour with [him] in this expedition88. Bysted states that Gregory’s concept of spiritual reward 83 Letter of Gregory VII to Count William VI of Poitou, 10 September 1074, Register (as in note 80), 126-28, no. 2.3; Register (trans.), 94-95, no. 2.3; Correspondence, 38-39. The real reason behind the pope’s discouragement of William of Poitou’s “crusading zeal” may not be related to any roll back of the Saljuqs, rumors of such notwithstanding, but “seems to have been motivated by the papal desire to detain in Francia an ally of [papal] reform who would be useful in the event – likely enough, late in 1074 – of a papal confrontation with King Philip I” (I. S. ROBINSON, Pope Gregory VII, the Princes and the Pactum 1077-1080, in: EHR 94 (1979) 721-56, 754; ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 150; Eng. trans., 166. 84 Letter of Gregory VII to King Henry IV of Germany, 7 December 1074, Register (as in note 80), 165-68, no. 2.31; Register (trans.), 122-24, no. 2.31; Correspondence, 56-58. 85 Letter of Gregory VII to all the faithful of St. Peter, especially those beyond the Alps, 16 December 1074, Register (as in note 80), 172-73, no. 2.37; Register (trans.), 127-28, no. 2.37. 86 Letter of Gregory VII to countess Matilda of Tuscany, on or shortly after 16 December 1074; JL 4911; C. ERDMANN - N. FICKERMANN (eds.), Briefsammlungen der Zeit Heinrichs IV, Weimar 1950 (= MGH.B 5), 86-87, no. 43; H. E. J. COWDREY (ed. and trans.), The Epistolae Vagantes of Pope Gregory VII, Oxford 1972, 10-13, no. 5; Correspondence (as in note 80), 60-61. 87 Letter of Gregory VII to Abbot Hugh of Cluny, 22 January 1075, Register (as in note 80), 189, no. 2.49; Register (trans.), 139-40, no. 2.49; Correspondence, 64-65. Discussion of Pope Gregory’s crusading plans of 1074 can be found in CHEVEDDEN, Canon 2 (as in note 2), 67-68, 85, with references to previous studies. 88 Certus enim esto, quoniam te et omnes, qui tecum in hac expeditione fuerint fatigati, dupplici immo multiplici remuneratione, ut credimus, Petrus et Paulus principes apostolorum The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 289 was not based on the concept of Alexander II89. But here we see Gregory, on his own authority, imparting to those that join his Crusade something that only Peter and Paul can give – a double reward; nay, one that is many times as great. Peter and Paul were claimed as co-founders of the Roman Church, and, when popes invoked their names, it was to accentuate the position of Rome over other Churches and the position of the bishop of Rome over other bishops. Bysted correctly states that “when the popes referred to Peter and Paul in the crusade indulgences, they were underlining their own authority” 90. The authority that is being underscored here is the authority of the pope to grant a double reward; nay, one that is many times as great. The papal expression, dupplici immo multiplici remuneratione, which is more than a little paradoxical, has never been explained. This expression is not accidental. It must have conveyed some specific meaning to Count William and to all who shall labour with [him] in this expedition. What could that meaning be? What kind of reward is both double and at the same time much more than double? How can what is double be called more double? or many times greater than double? The Crusade indulgence, as formulated by Alexander II, offers such a double reward: full remission of penances and full remission of sins. This double reward is many times greater than the conventional double reward because it allows the recipient to attain eternal life. Suddenly, dupplici immo multiplici remuneratione makes a great deal of sense. Gregory here seems not to be speaking by way of riddle but by reason of a sound grasp of the Crusade indulgence. Count William also seems to have had a sufficient grasp of indulgences in order to understand this expression. Although the possible connection between the Crusade indulgence and the “double reward” may not provide conclusive proof that Gregory granted Crusade indulgences, it does shift the balance of probability in favor of this conclusion. After the Crusade was suspended in the late summer or early fall of 1074, Gregory wrote to a veteran of the Barbastro Crusade, Count William VI of Poitou, and thanked him for his willingness to enter into the service of St. Peter (servitium sancti Petri) and join the Eastern Crusade. In the letter, he states that he does not think it advisable to provide details about the expedition at present, because rumour has it that, in parts beyond the donabunt, Register (as in note 80), 71, no. 1.46; Register (trans.), 51, no. 1.46. Cowdrey translates the phrase, dupplici immo multiplici remuneratione, as “a double, no a manifold reward”. This has been amended to “a double reward; nay, one that is many times as great”. 89 BYSTED (as in note 13), 67. 90 Ibid., 214. 290 Paul E. Chevedden sea, by God’s mercy the Christians have far repelled the savagery of the pagans, and we are still awaiting the guidance of divine providence about what more we ought to do. For his good will in responding to the Crusade summons, William is assured that for [him] there has also been laid up with God a full reward91. In December, when Gregory’s plans for a Crusade were revived, the pope attempted to enlist Henry IV in the project. He wrote to Henry on 7 December, and, for his cooperation, he promised him the prize that would lead [him] to eternal life: remission of all his sins: May Almighty God, from whom all good things come, by the merits and authority of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul absolve you from all sins, and may he cause you to walk in the way of his commandments and lead you to life eternal 92. Here, eternal life is regarded as the culmination of a process that begins with the remission of sins. The remission of sins is accomplished by Almighty God, from whom all good things come, through the merits and authority of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. In other words, in the remission of sins, the merits and authority of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul are the means by which God, the author of salvation, accomplishes this act. The pope here, by invoking Peter and Paul, is calling attention to his own authority to remit sins by virtue of his apostolic powers. The indispensable condition for the attainment of eternal life is the remission of sins. The remission of sins is necessary for the attainment of eternal life because it enables the sinner to be reconciled with God. Once sin has been removed and all further attachment to sin has been eliminated, God can guide the individual, in this case, Henry IV, in the way of his commandments and lead him to life eternal. Here, the evidence appears to indicate that Gregory’s Eastern Crusade was supported by a plenary indulgence. On 16 December, Gregory issued a general crusading appeal to all the faithful of St. Peter (fideles sancti Petri), especially those beyond the Alps. In it, he granted all those that desired to defend the heavenly excellency by going on Crusade the full promise of salvation, regardless of whether they died in combat or not: For through labour that is for a moment you can gain 91 Vobis tamen et de bona voluntate plena apud Deum remuneratio est reposita …, Register (as in note 80), 128, no. 2.3. 92 Omnipotens Deus, a quo cuncta bona procedunt, meritis et auctoritate beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli a cunctis peccatis te absolvat et per viam mandatorum suorum incedere faciat atque ad vitam aeternam perducat, Register (as in note 80), 168, no. 2.31; Register (trans.), 124, no. 2.31. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 291 an eternal reward (2 Cor. 4:17-18)93. Here, it seems, the pope was drawing attention to the ultimate result of the plenary indulgence: an eternal reward. How can we be certain that Gregory granted an indulgence and not some other spiritual reward? The evidence is meager. There is no explicit reference to the institution of the indulgence in the letters of Gregory VII. There is no attempt to explain the indulgence. The term “indulgence” is not used, and no precise and unequivocal formulation of the indulgence is provided. There is no listing of the successive steps of the indulgence, and there is no description of the “double reward” that indulgences offer. On the other hand, there is a certain general framework of thought that appears to fit the indulgence. Whatever Gregory may be granting, this spiritual favor implies a certain background of ideas with which the pope assumes his audience to be familiar. He does not have to go into great detail about it. One of the characteristic features of the early grants of indulgence is their extreme brevity. The Clermont indulgence is a typical example (see below). The Barbastro indulgence, with its wealth of details, is a rare exception. Why? As Bull explains, the text of Eos qui in Ispaniam may be interpreted as Alexander II’s response to a query put to him about the indulgence94. If this were so, there is a strong likelihood that had questions not been raised about this indulgence, Alexander II would never have provided a precise formulation of it. It seems that the Crusade indulgence presupposed a certain background of ideas that did not need to be elaborated upon. Behind the Crusade indulgence was a common Christianity, the penitential system of the Church, and a rudimentary knowledge of indulgences. Papal references to indulgences during the eleventh century seem not to have required elaborate clarification, and, if such clarification were need, this was most likely communicated by word of mouth rather than by the written word. 93 Nam per momentaneum laborem aeternam potestis acquirere mercedem (2 Cor. 4:1718)…, Register (as in note 80), 173, no. 2.37; Register (trans.), 128, no. 2.37. The theme of crusading as little work for an immense reward is taken up by BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX (1090-1153): signum cruces accipite, ut et causam Crucifixi fideliter excequentes, pro tanto labore brevi et modico magna et aeterna percipere valeatis stipendia, PL 212: 228B-C; quoted in BYSTED (as in note 13), 280. This theme is also employed by Jacques de Vitry (ca. 11701240) in a Crusade sermon: labor brevis et merces immanis (JACQUES DE VITRY, Sermones Vulgares, in: MAIER, Crusade Propaganda [as in note 60], 114-17; BYSTED, 159, 285). 94 BULL, Knightly Piety (as in note 55), 75-76. 292 Paul E. Chevedden It is therefore probable to conclude that Gregory VII granted a plenary indulgence to promote his Jerusalem Crusade. Did he also grant a plenary indulgence for the Sicilian Crusade? Here the evidence is even stronger. On 14 March 1076, Pope Gregory wrote to Archbishop Arnald of Acerenza and requested that he grant Count Roger a remission of his sins and do the same for his knights who [were] about to fight with him against the pagans in Sicily. The indulgenced grant reads: Wherefore with pastoral care we lay this burden of toil upon you, or rather, on behalf of blessed Peter we command, that, laying aside all the reluctance of slothfulness, you should go to him [Count Roger], and, strengthened by the authority of this our order, if he shall be willing to obey us as he has promised, and, if he shall receive the sacrament of Penance [lit.: if he shall do penance] dealing with every bond of his sins, as befits a Christian, you should entirely absolve both him and also his knights, who are about to fight with him against the pagans [in Sicily], from their sins, provided, however, that they [i.e., his knights] receive the sacrament of Penance [lit., that they do penance]. We add, furthermore, that you should admonish him with godly admonition that he keep himself from capital offences and that he seek so to spread the worship of the Christian name amongst the pagans that he may deserve to obtain victory over these enemies95. The interpretation of this text turns on the meaning of one word: poenitentiam. Gottlob understands it to mean penitential acts. “Penitential acts” could comprise contrition, the confession of sins, and the satisfaction that is made for sins. Gottlob seems to reduce “penitential acts” to certain acts of “satisfaction”, or “penance”, that are performed by the penitent in order to repair the harm caused by sin. He concludes from his analysis that 95 Quapropter pastorali cura hoc laboris onus tibi imponimus, immo ex parte beati Petri imperamus, ut postposita omni torporis desidia illum [Rogerum] adeas eumque huius nostri precepti auctoritate fultus, si nobis parere sicut pollicitus est voluerit et poenitentiam, ut oportet christianum, egerit, ab omni peccatorum vinculo tam illum quam etiam suos milites, qui cum eo contra paganos, ita tamen ut agant poenitentiam, pugnaturi sunt, peccatis maxime absolvas. Addimus praeterea, ut eum pia admonitione admoneas, ut se a capitalibus criminibus custodiat et christiani nominis culturam inter paganos amplificare studeat, ut de eisdem hostibus victoriam consequi mereatur, Gregory VII to Archbishop Arnald of Acerenza, 14 March 1076, Register (as in note 80), 271-72, no. 3.11; Register (trans.), 193-94, no. 3.11. This translation is based on Cowdrey’s rendition but with substantial alterations. For discussion of this text, see GOTTLOB (as in note 12), 51-52; PAULUS (as in note 11), 1: 57; ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 157-58; Eng. trans., 173-74; BYSTED (as in note 13), 67; J. M. JENSEN, Peregrinatio sive expeditio: Why the First Crusade was not a Pilgrimage, in: AlMasāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 15 (September 2003) 119-37, 124, 134 n. 73. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 293 the text does not refer to an actual indulgence. Paulus interprets poenitentiam as “repentance” or “resolve to reform” and thus rules out the possibility that the term refers to the sacrament of Penance. He seems to equate “penance” with “contrition”: “a grief and detestation of mind at the sin committed [‘repentance’], together with the resolution not to sin in the future” 96. Bysted thinks that Gregory is conveying the idea that “the undertaking of the war is enjoined as the penance”. This would mean, she conjectures, “that the combat itself is the penance, and not that the penance is remitted for the warriors as a reward”. Similarly, Janus Møller Jensen believes that “the penance thus has to be the fighting itself”. Gregory’s grant of remission of sins, however, is contingent upon the requirement of poenitentiam. If the thesis proposed by Bysted and Jensen is accepted, the “combat” or “fighting” would have to be undertaken first before any remission of sins could be granted. This scenario would appear to be unlikely. What Gregory seems to be demanding is that the requirement of the sacrament of Penance be satisfied before Archbishop Arnald grants Count Roger and his knights a full and complete remission of sins 97. Only those that satisfy the requirements for gaining a plenary indulgence may receive one, and one of these requirements was the sacrament of Penance. Other requirements were a detachment from sin and the performance of the prescribed work for gaining the indulgence. Accordingly, Gregory directs Archbishop Arnald to urge Roger to resist serious sin, and he relates the plenary indulgence to the execution of the indulgenced work – the Crusade in Sicily: We add, furthermore, that you should admonish [Roger] with godly admonition that he keep himself from capital offences and that he 96 Contritio … animi dolor ac detestatio est de peccato commisso, cum propositio non peccandi de caetero, Council of Trent (Session 14, 25 November 1551, chap. 4), TANNER (as in note 25), 2: 705. 97 Norman Housley maintains that “Gregory did not always take care to link his grants to the penitential system of the time by insisting on a formal confession, and issuing an indulgence which specified that the fighting would replace canonically imposed penance. His absolutions therefore failed to strike a chord in the minds of his contemporaries, as Urban II’s indulgence did” (HOUSLEY, Crusades against Christians [as in note 44], 75). Housley’s premise is true but irrelevant. Gregory did not always take care to stipulate the requirement of sacramental confession because it was not necessary to do so. This requirement would have been generally understood, and there would have been no need to always mention it. Housley’s conclusion therefore does not follow from his premise. The requirement of sacramental confession is akin to the dog that doesn’t always bark. Housley, however, wants the dog barking all the time before he will concede its existence. 294 Paul E. Chevedden seek so to spread the worship of the Christian name amongst the pagans that he may deserve to obtain victory over these enemies. The Crusade Indulgence of Pope Victor III (1086-1088) In 1087, the Pisans and Genoese, together with forces from Rome and Amalfi, launched an amphibious assault on al-Mahdīyah, the capital of Zīrid Ifrīqiyah, and its suburb Zawīlah. After sacking these two places, they compelled the Zīrid ruler, Tamīm b. al-Mu‘izz (1062-1108), to make an immediate payment to the Pisans, to forswear all naval attacks against Christian territory, and to free all Christian captives 98. This expedition had the full support of Pope Victor III, Gregory VII’s successor, who, according to Erdmann, conducted the enterprise “entirely as a crusade” 99. The Chronicle of Montecassino relates that the pope called upon almost all the peoples 98 Dum ista geruntur, Pisani, qui apud Africam negotiandum profiscebantur, quasdam iniurias passi, exercitu congregato, urbem regiam regis Thumini oppugnantes, usque ad maiorem turrim, qua rex defendebatur, capiunt. Sed quia sua virtute, urbe expugnata, patriam retinere minus sufficientes erant, comiti Siciliensi, quem in talibus sufficientem et praevalidum cognoscebant, eam, si recipere velit, per legatos invitantes, offerunt. Porro ille, quia regi Thumino amicitiam se servaturum dixerat, legalitatem suam servans, in damno illius assentire distulit. Rex vero Thuminus cum certando resistere nequit, pretio pacem mercatus, quam armis minus sufficiebat; pecunia classem finibus suis arcet, promittens etiam, sub ostentatione legis suae, nulla classe fines christiani nominis pervasum ulterius tentare, et quos eiusdem religionis captivos tenebat, coactus est absolvere, MALATERRA (as in note 51), 86-87 (IV.3); Eng. trans. 179. The Pisan chanson de geste, Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum, and the chronicle of Bernold of St. Blasien both indicate that Tamīm b. al-Mu‘izz entered into a tributary relationship with the papacy, but this may reflect merely the misperceptions and self-delusion of the Crusaders regarding their “peace” treaty with the North African ruler: Terram iurat Sancti Petri esse sine dubio, Et ab eo tenet eam iam absque conludio; Unde semper mittet Romam tributa et premia, Auri puri et argenti nunc mandat insignia, Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum, in: H. E. J. COWDREY, The Mahdīyah Campaign of 1087, in: EHR 92 (1977), 1-29, 28; BERTHOLD, ABBOT OF ZWIEFALTEN, and BERNOLD OF CONSTANCE, Bertholds und Bernolds Chroniken [Bertholdi et Bernoldi chronica], ed. I. S. ROBINSON, trans. H. ROBINSON-HAMMERSTEIN, Darmstadt 2002 (= AQDGMA 14), 360: Affricanum regem … apostolicae sedi tributarium effecerunt. On the contradictory perceptions of Muslims and Christians in their pacts, truces, and alliances, see R. I. BURNS and P. E. CHEVEDDEN, Negotiating Cultures: Bilingual Surrender Treaties in Muslim-Crusader Spain under James the Conqueror, Leiden 1999 (= The Medieval Mediterranean: Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1453, 22). The fullest account in Arabic of the Crusade against al-Mahdīyah is Abū Muḥammad ‘Abd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Tijānī, Riḥlat al-Tijānī, Ṭarābulus al-Gharb = Tūnis 1981, 331-32. 99 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 272; Eng. trans., 293. Others disagree; cf. COWDREY, Mahdīyah Campaign (as in note 98), 1-29. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 295 of Italy to take part in this Crusade and conferred upon the participants the banner of St. Peter and granted them remission of all their sins100. The Crusaders then set out for North Africa with Christ as their leader 101. Before the attack on the Zīrid capital, the Crusades fulfilled the conditions for the Crusade indulgence: sacramental confession and eucharistic communion102. Erdmann equates the promise of remissio peccatorum with an indulgence103, and Alfons Becker points to the similarities between the Norman Crusade in Sicily and Victor III’s North African Crusade. In 1063, following Count Roger’s great victory at Cerami, Pope Alexander II had sent the Crusaders the banner of St. Peter and granted them release from their sins (absolutio de offensis) 104. Likewise, in 1087, Victor presented the Crusaders headed to North Africa with the banner of St. Peter and offered them remission of all their sins. Pope Victor evidently considered the North African expedition to be a Crusade in precisely the same way as the Sicilian Crusade. The fact that the Sicilian Crusade and the North African Crusade were both modeled on the same type of papally-sponsored expedition and received the same crusading benefits suggests that these campaigns were linked and grew out of a general movement against Islam that was now gaining strength in the Latin West. Pope Urban II and the Tarragona Crusade Indulgence Pope Urban II’s Crusade bull of 1 July 1089 to the Catalan counts Berenguer Ramon II, Ermengol IV of Urgell, and Bernard II of Besalú called 100 Estuabat interea ingenti desiderio idem Victor apostolicus, qualiter Saracenorum in Africa commorantium confunderet, conculcaret atque contereret infidelitatem. Unde cum episcopis et cardinalibus consilio habito de omnibus fere Italie populis christianorum exercitum congregans atque vexillum beati Petri apostoli illis contradens sub remissione omnium peccatorum contra Saracenos in Africa commorantes direxit. Christo igitur duce Africanam devoluti dum essent ad urbem, omni nisu illam expugnantes Deo adiuvante ceperunt interfectis de Saracenorum exercitu centum milibus pugnatorum. Quod ne quis ambigat hoc absque voluntate accidisse divina, illo die, quo christiani de Saracenis victoriam adepti sunt, eo etiam Italie divinitus patefactum est, Die Chronik von Montecassino, ed. H. HOFFMANN, Hannover 1980 (= MGH.SS 34), 453. 101 Ibid.; Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum, in: COWDREY, Mahdīyah Campaign (as in note 98), 25: Hos conduxit Ihesus Christus quem necabat Africa. 102 Carmen in victoriam Pisanorum (as in note 101), 26: offerunt corde devoto Deo penitentiam et communicant vicissim Christi eucharistiam. 103 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 272; Eng. trans., 293. 104 See above note 64 and text; BECKER, Urban II (as in note 19), 302-04. 296 Paul E. Chevedden for the reestablishment of the archbishopric of Tarragona and offered to the participants the same indulgence (eandem … indulgentiam) as would accrue to those going as pilgrims to Jerusalem or some other place. The same spiritual benefits that would be gained by making a pilgrimage – either to Jerusalem or to another pilgrimage site – would now apply to whoever, in penitence and for the remission of your sins … expend[s] all the costs and labor of such a [pilgrimage] journey on the restoration of the Church at Tarragona: We exhort and charge you in the Lord to make every effort to restore the condition of the city of Tarragona, so that a bishopric might exist there. In penitence and for the remission of your sins, we charge you to use all of your armed might and material wealth for the restoration of this Church. We encourage those who desire to set out for Jerusalem or some other [pilgrimage] site in a spirit of penitence or devotion to expend all the costs and efforts of such a journey on the restoration of the Church at Tarragona, so that, with God’s help, an episcopal seat may exist there in safety and so that the city might stand as a stout defense [lit.: a concentric defense] against the Saracens for the Christian people, on whom, by God’s mercy, we bestow the same indulgence (indulgentiam) that they would gain if they had undertaken the long journey [to Jerusalem or to some other (pilgrimage) site]105. Erdmann recognizes the Tarragona Crusade as the first military expedition undertaken against the Muslims that was rewarded with the same 105 Hortamur et obsecramus in Domino prudentiam vestram, ut summa ope nitamini Tarraconensis urbis statum eatenus reparare, quatenus ibi cathedra haberi possit episcopalis. Vobis ergo in penitentiam peccatorumque remissionem mandamus, ut potentia et divitiis vestris in restitutionem eiusdem ecclesie devotissime et intentissime desudetis. Eis autem, qui vel in Hierusalem, vel in partes alias penitente spiritu vel devotionis ituri sunt, suademus totam illam vie et sumptus operam restitutioni ecclesie Tarraconensis impendere; quatenus, auxiliante Domino, et cathedra inibi tuto habeatur episcopalis et civitas eadem Sarracenorum opposita populis in murum et antemurale Christicolae populi celebretur, quibus eandem ex Dei misericordia indulgentiam pollicemur, quam promererentur, si indicte vie prolixitatem explerent, Urban II’s Crusade bull to the Catalan counts Berenguer Ramon II, Ermengol IV of Urgell, and Bernard II of Besalú, 1 July 1089; JL 5401; PL 151: 303A-C; D. MANSILLA (ed.), La documentación pontificia hasta Inocencio III (965-1216), Rome 1955 (= MHV.R 1), 46-47, no. 29; trans. based upon ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 292-93; Eng. trans., 315; O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 31, with amendments made by author. The phrase “armed might and material wealth” is taken from MC CRANK (as in note 3), 186. For further discussion of this text, see P. F. KEHR, Das Papsttum und der katalanische Prinzipat bis zur Vereinigung mit Aragon, Berlin 1926 (= APAW.PH 1), 44; GOÑI GAZTAMBIDE (as in note 41), 56-57; MC CRANK (as in note 3), 185-88; BECKER, Urban II (as in note 19), 338-39; O’CALLAGHAN 31-32. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 297 spiritual benefits as a pilgrimage, but he draws the wrong conclusions from this fact. He links the spiritual rewards to be gained by those participating in the Tarragona Crusade exclusively with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and to no other place. Cowdrey, Mayer, Bull, Riley-Smith, and Flori have fallen into the same trap. These scholars pass over the connection to “some other place” in the Tarragona Crusade appeal as irrelevant. Because the reference to “some other place” in the Tarragona appeal does not lie on the main line of conceptual development that proceeds directly from Tarragona to Jerusalem, Erdmann and others ignore it as not being worthy of the historian’s attention. The tacit assumption is that the purpose of Tarragona is to pave the way for the “First” Crusade. The significance of Tarragona, for Riley-Smith, is that Pope Urban “had treated an act of war for the remission of sins as equal in merit to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem”. Then, “he followed this in 1095 by taking the logical step of associating the physical liberation of the Sepulchre directly with pilgrimages to it. This had a theoretical advantage over [Pope] Gregory [VII]’s formulation, which seems to have been justified merely by the danger involved, because violence was now associated with an act which was indubitably penitential…” 106. But the predetermined goal of crusading was not Jerusalem, and the association of the liberation of Jerusalem with pilgrimages to it was not the next logical step in a process grinding inexorably on toward the “First” Crusade. Urban had simply treated the recovery of former Christian territory – the rebuilding of Tarragona – as equal in merit to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or to some other pilgrimage site. The “logical step” taken by Urban in 1095 was not to associate the physical liberation of Jerusalem directly with pilgrimages to it, but to extend crusading activities already underway in the central and western Mediterranean to the eastern Mediterranean. Violence was not associated with an act that was “indubitably penitential”. In the case of the Jerusalem Crusade, it was associated with the rescue of Eastern Christendom. In the case of Tarragona, it was associated with the reestablishment of an archbishopric. These enterprises became indulgenced acts, not because they were “indubitably penitential”, but because the pope attached an indulgence to them, offering a spiritual reward to those who engaged in works considered to be conducive to the good of the entire Church. To assist in the reestablishment of the archbishopric of Tarragona, a papal bull made the Crusade indulgence applicable to whoever used all of [their] armed might and material wealth to 106 RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 66. 298 Paul E. Chevedden restore the archbishopric of Tarragona and undertook this task in penitence and for the remission of sins. Likewise, to effect the rescue of Eastern Christendom, the Council of Clermont made the Crusade indulgence applicable to whoever, with the proper religious intent, set out for Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God. The penitential benefits of both enterprises were secured, not by joining warfare to works that had previously been considered to be penitential, but by a papal decree that linked the Crusade indulgence, not to a pre-existing penitential act, but to a military expedition107. The Tarragona Crusade should not be understood solely in terms of factors that led the way to the expedition to Jerusalem. Although many scholars regard the “First” Crusade as the inevitable end product of the Tarragona Crusade, Joseph O’Callaghan rejects this approach: “Pope Urban’s letters reveal that he was fully cognizant of the efforts of Christian Spain to conquer lands held by the Muslims. Indeed, he seems to have had a broad view of the relationship between the Islamic world and Christendom. If he could offer remission of sins and indulgence to the Catalans striving to repopulate and defend Tarragona, he could extend the same benefit some years later to those going on Crusade to the Holy Land” 108. Thus, the apparatus related to crusading in Spain was adopted, adapted, and applied to the struggle against Islam in the eastern Mediterranean. The forgotten features of the Tarragona Crusade need to be rehabilitated. Six years prior to the “First” Crusade, Urban had applied the same penitential benefits that would be gained by making a pilgrimage – “to Jerusalem or some other place” – to the Crusade to reestablish of the archbishopric of Tarragona. Those that contributed their own armed might and material wealth to this effort would be granted an indulgence. Count Berenguer Ramon II of Barcelona (1076-97) was quick to respond. He promised to restore Tarragona and pay an annual tribute to achieve this end, and he delivered the city and all the land in his power to St. Peter and his 107 Many scholars have advanced the view that the Jerusalem Crusade became an indulgenced act, not because a papal decree linked it to a military expedition, but because a military expedition to Jerusalem was linked to a pilgrimage. See below notes 147-53 and text. 108 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 306; Eng. trans., 331; H. E. J. COWDREY, Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the First Crusade, in: Hist(L) 55 (1970) 177-88, 186; MAYER, Crusades, 21988 (as in note 7), 27; BULL, Knightly Piety (as in note 55), 2-3, 207; RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 66-67; FLORI, Réforme (as in note 52), 76; O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 32. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 299 vicars109. In response to this magnanimous gesture, Urban appointed Bishop Berenguer of Vic as archbishop of Tarragona and urged Count Ermengol of Urgell to work for the recovery of Tarragona for the salvation of [his] soul (pro animae tuae salute). The pope assured him that he would be granted the Crusade indulgence: You should not doubt that you can offer an acceptable sacrifice to the almighty Lord and receive the indulgence (indulgentiam) of your sins, if, by your help, Christianity is augmented in this town110. He was commanded to do this work for our indulgence and that of the holy apostles (per beatorum apostolorum et nostram indulgentiam), and whatever assistance the count could provide Bishop Berenguer should be done in penitence and for the release of sins (hoc itaque tibi in penitentiam et peccatorum absolutionem indicimus)111. Urban subsequently wrote to Bishop Bertrand of Barcelona and the counts of the city, Berenguer Ramon and Ramon Berenguer, and urged them to make every effort to restore Tarragona for the remission of their sins and the salvation of their souls112. At the time of the “First” Crusade, Urban again assured the Catalans that the Tarragona Crusade carried the full Crusade indulgence and urged even those who had resolved to go on the Jerusalem expedition to fulfill 109 Berengarius sequidem Barchinonensis comes auctoritatis nostre persuasione commonitus, pro anime sue salute, cum sue potestatis magnatibus non solum restitutioni prefate urbis insistit, sed et urbem ipsam et omnem sue potestatis terram b. Petro eisuque vicariis legali stipulatione tradidit, censumque quinque librarum argenti Lateranensi palatio annis persolvendum instituit, Urban II to dilecto fratri Berengario Ausonensi episcopo in Terraconensi metropolis translato eiusque successoribus canonice substituendis in perpetuum, 1 July 1091, MANSILLA (as in note 105), 49-52, no. 32; MCCRANK (as in note 3), 210-15; BECKER, Urban II (as in note 19), 341-42; O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 32. 110 Acceptabile siquidem omnipotenti Domino sacrificium te offerre et peccatorum tuorum indulgentiam consequi ne dubitaueris, si in eadem urbe christianitatis tuo auxilio procuretur, Urban II to Count Ermengol of Urgell, 1 July 1091, PUS 1/2, 286-87, no. 22; BECKER, Urban II (as in note 19), 342; O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 32; BYSTED (as in note 13), 7374. 111 Ibid. 112 Vobis quoque, filii in Christo dilecti et comites et primores, in peccatorum remissione iniungimus, quatinus predicto abbati adiutores existere procuretis, ut Deo annuente regularem in monasterio disciplinam reformare et res augere ualeat, que ad usum fratrum illic Deo seruientium a uestris antecessoribus pro aniumarum suarum salute oblate sunt, Urban II to counts Berenguer Ramon and Ramon Berenguer of Barcelona, c. 1091-92, PUS 1/2, 289-90, no. 26. On 9 December 1093, Urban again wrote to the bishop and counts of Barcelona. This time he urged them to undertake the restoration of the monastery of San Cugat de Valles, which had been destroyed in 985 by Ibn Abī ‘Āmir (981-1002), known as al-Manṣūr (the Almanzor of Christian sources). Like the Tarragona Crusade, this resauratio was to be done in remissionem peccatorum vestrorum (PUS 1/2, 290-92, no. 27). 300 Paul E. Chevedden their pious purpose in Spain for the remission of sins: For the sake of the city and Church of Tarragona we beg you with urgency, and command you for the remission of your sins, to carry out its restoration in every way. For you know how significant a defense of the Christian people and resistance to the Saracens it would be if this celebrated city rose up again with God’s help. If, therefore, the warriors of other provinces unanimously propose to aid the Churches in Asia and to liberate their brothers from the tyranny of the Saracens, so also should you, at our earnest request, collectively strive to help with continuous efforts the neighboring Churches suffering from the incursions of the Saracens. If anyone should die for God and for the love of his brethren on that expedition, he should not doubt that by the mercy of our most clement God he will truly receive an indulgence (indulgentiam) for his sins and participation in life eternal. If anyone of you, therefore, plans to go to Asia, let him try to fulfill the desire of his devotion here. For it is no feat of valor to liberate Christians from Saracens in one place [i. e. in Asia] only to deliver Christians to Saracen tyranny and oppression in another place [i.e. in Spain]. May Almighty God fill your hearts with brotherly love and reward your valorous exploit with victory over your enemies113. 113 Urbanus episcopus seruus seruorum Dei. Dilectis filiis Bisuldunensi, Empuritensi, Rossellionensi, Ceritanensi comitibus et eorum militibus salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Pro Tarraconensi urbe uel ecclesia nobilitatem uestram atentius deprecamur et in peccatorum remissionem precipimus, ut ad eius restitutionem modis omnibus insistatis. Scitis enim quanta Christi populi propugnatio, quanta Saracenorum perueniat impugnatio, si illius egregie ciuitatis status largiente Domino restauretur. Si ergo ceterarum prouinciarum milites Asiane ecclesie subuenire unanimiter proposuere et fraters suos ab Saracenorum tyrannide liberare, ita et uos unanimiter uicine ecclesie contra Saracenorum incursus patientius succurrere nostris exortationibus laborate. In qua videlicet expeditione si quis pro Dei et fratrum suorum dilectione occuberit, peccatorum profecto suorum indulgentiam et eterne vite consortium in venturum se ex clementissima Dei nostri miseratione non dubitet. Si quis ergo vestrum in Asiam ire deliberaverit, hic devotionis sue desiderium studeat consummare. Neque enim virtutis est alibi a Saracenis christianos eruere, alibi christianos Saracenorum tyrannidi oppressionique exponere. Omnipotens Deus et cor uestrum ad amorem fraternitatis exsuscitet et uirtuti uestre de hostibus suis uictoriam administret, Urban II’s letter to the counts Bernat of Besalú, Hugo of Ampurias, Guislabert of Roussilon, and Guillem of Cerdanya and their knights, c. July 1096, PUS 1/2, 287-88, no. 23; trans. based on O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 33, with additions and amendments made by author. See also ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 294-95; Eng. trans., 317; L. RILEY-SMITH - J. RILEY-SMITH, The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095-1274, London 1981 (= DMH 4), 40; GOÑI GAZTAMBIDE (as in note 41), 6061; BECKER, Urban II (as in note 19), 347-48; N. HOUSLEY, Jerusalem and the Development of the Crusade Idea, 1099-1128, in: B. Z. KEDAR (ed.), The Horns of Hattīn (Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, Jerusalem and Haifa, 2-6 July 1987), Jerusalem – London 1992, 27-40, 32-33. Kehr assumed The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 301 Here, Pope Urban draws a parallel between the crusading efforts in Spain and the crusading efforts in Western Asia, which he elaborates on more fully in his letter to Bishop Peter of Huesca in 1098: In our days God has eased the sufferings of the Christian peoples and allowed the faith to triumph. By means of the Christian forces He has conquered the Turks in Asia and the Moors in Europe, and restored to Christian worship cities that were once celebrated114. Urban makes no distinction between the conquests in the western Mediterranean and the conquests in the eastern Mediterranean. He portrays the crusading enterprise as a Mediterranean-wide struggle against Islam that is directed against the Turks in Asia and the Moors in Europe for the purpose of restor[ing] to Christian worship cities that were once celebrated. Accordingly, the same spiritual benefits were offered to those fighting in Western Asia and those fighting in Spain. Pope Urban accorded to Christian warriors willing to go to Jerusalem the same spiritual rewards that he bestowed on those willing to participate in the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula115. In doing so, the pope acknowledged that the Holy Land Crusade was as worthy of spiritual support as the war against Islam in Spain. The two wars were considered as “parallel undertakings” in a Chris- that this undated Crusade bull dealt with preparations for the first attacks on Tarragona and dated it between 1089 and 1091 (PUS 1/2, 287, no. 23). Erdmann recognized that it referred unmistakably to the Council of Clermont and the departure of knights on the “First” Crusade and fixed its date between 1096 and 1099 (ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 294 n. 37; Eng. trans., 317 n. 37). McCrank suggests that it was most likely issued in 1096 when Urban made his tour of southern France and met with Archbishop Berenguer at Nîmes and St. Gilles in July of 1096 (MC CRANK [as in note 3], 284-85 n. 51). BYSTED (as in note 13), 78-79, explains that this indulgenced grant “applied to all participants, dead or surviving”, but “the rewards for those who were killed” receive special emphasis probably because the pope was responding to a question regarding this matter. 114 Quia post multa annorum curricula nostris potissimum temporibus christiani populi pressuras releuare, fidem exaltare dignatus est. Nostris siquidem diebus in Asia Turcos, in Europa Mauros christianorum uiribus debellavit, et urbes quondam famosas religionis sue cultui gratia propensiore restituit, Urban II to Bishop Peter of Huesca, 11 May 1098, “Epistolae et privilegia”, PL 151: 504C; A. DURÁN GUDIOL, La Iglesia de Aragón durante los reinados de Sancho Ramírez y Pedro I (1062?-1104), Rome 1962 (= PIEHE.M 6), 192-95, no. 20; trans. ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 296; Eng. trans., 319; BECKER, Urban II (as in note 19), 34849. 115 O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), xi , 21, 32, 33, 35, 178. 302 Paul E. Chevedden tian counterattack that was designed to roll back the Islamic advance and to restore the Christian <Churches> to their former freedom116. Pope Urban II and the Jerusalem Crusade Indulgence Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095) established a plenary indulgence for everyone who head[ed] for Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God. This canon, which appears as the second of thirty-two canons recorded in an account of the Clermont legislation made by one of the council’s participants, Bishop Lambert of Arras, provides the only direct evidence of the Crusade indulgence from the Council of Clermont. The full text of the decree reads, Whoever for devotion alone, and not for the purpose of gaining honor or money, heads for Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God, that expedition is to be imputed to him [as satisfaction] for all penance117. 116 Audiuimus quosdam uestrum cum militibus qui Ierusalem liberandae christianitatis gratia tendunt ... nos enim ad hanc expeditionem militum animos instigauimus, qui armis suis Saracenorum feritatem declinare et christianorum <ecclesias> possint libertati pristinae restituere, Urban II’s letter to the monks of Vallombrosa, 7 October 1096; R. HIESTAND (ed.), Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, Göttingen 1985 (= VOP 3, AAWG.PH 136), 88-89, no. 2; trans. JENSEN (as in note 95), 119-37, 121. As Robert I. Burns has demonstrated with regard to the Valencian Crusades, the papacy was relentless in not making a distinction between the two crusading theaters of operation: “Papal policy saw Spain and the East as two fronts in a single war to recover from Islam the lost lands of Christendom” (R. I. BURNS, The Many Crusades of Valencia’s Conquest [1225-1280]: A Historiographical Labyrinth, in: D. J. K AGAY - Th. M. VANN [eds.], On the Social Origins of Medieval Institutions: Essays in Honor of Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Leiden 1998, 167-77, 172). Erdmann considered the two crusading theaters of operation as “parallel undertakings, forming a unit from the spiritual standpoint but separate as campaigns” (ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke, 296; Eng. trans., 319). 117 Quicumque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel pecunie adeptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Hierusalem profectus fuerit, iter illud pro omni penitentia ei reputetur, R. SOMERVILLE (ed.), The Councils of Urban II, vol. 1, Decreta claromontensia, Amsterdam 1972 (= AHC.S 1), 74. I thank Donald J. Kagay for assistance in translating this decree. The version of the crusading canon in the Codex Laurentianus alludes to the Crusade indulgence by describing the expedition to Jerusalem (itinere Hierosolimitano) as being conducted “in the name of penitence”: <Precepit> ammoneri populum de itinere Hierosolimitano et quicumque ibit per nomen penitentie tam ipse quam res eius semper sint in treuga Domini, SOMERVILLE, Decreta claromontensia, 108; ID., Clermont 1095: Crusade and Canons, in: L. GARCÍA-GUIJARRO RAMOS (ed.), La Primera Cruzada novecientos años después: el Concilio de Clermont y los orígenes del movimiento cruzado, Madrid 1997, 63-77, 65; J. VON PFLUGK-H ARTTUNG, Acta pontificum Romanorum inedita, 3 vols., Tübingen 1881-86, 2: 161. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 303 Contemporaries knew perfectly well what this indulgence granted. James Brundage states that “all the chroniclers of the first crusade were in complete agreement in describing the scope of the indulgence: it granted a ‘remission of sins’ for those who took part in the expedition”, and the same theme reappears “in chronicles and sermons dealing with the later crusade expeditions”. As a result, “there was little popular confusion about what the crusade indulgence involved: it was accepted as a complete quittance of all former sins. Without any quibbling over poena et culpa, the common understanding was that the crusade indulgence wiped away the blot of sin altogether and that the crusader was atomically restored to a state of spiritual innocence” 118. According to Jonathan Riley-Smith, “there is no hint in the sources that contemporaries felt confused or saw any conflict between what was granted and what was preached”119. This seems at first sight a reasonable assessment, but it has been countered by a different scenario. Since Canon 2 speaks of a full remission of 118 BRUNDAGE, Medieval Canon Law (as in note 4), 149-51. Brundage explains what was understood by a “remission of sins”: “a complete and total wiping out of past misdeeds – an expunging of the record, so to speak – so that the crusader who died was believed to enter immediately, without qualification or post mortem penance, into eternal bliss with the saints in paradise”. How the Crusade indulgence was understood by the Crusaders themselves and by those who preached and chronicled the Crusades can give insight into the meaning of the Crusade indulgence. Yet scholars have generally ignored this valuable testimony. When it comes to determining the purpose of Urban’s Jerusalem Crusade, scholars have not hesitated “to analyse the perceptions of Urban’s audience” for clues to his plan for the expedition (RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders [as in note 6], 60), but this approach has been shunned by most historians who have sought to determine the meaning of the Crusade indulgence. 119 J. RILEY-SMITH, Death on the First Crusade, in: D. LOADES (ed.), The End of Strife: Papers Selected from the Proceedings of the Colloquium of the Commission Internationale d’Histoire Ecclésiastique Comparée held at the University of Durham, 2 to 9 September 1981, Edinburgh 1984, 14-31, 16-17. See also ID., First Crusade (as in note 67), 27-28: “But it is unlikely that the pope was unclear about what he was granting and there is no sign of confusion among the clergy who wrote the crusaders’ charters for them: They believed that participation in the crusade would ‘remit sins’ and help to save a man’s soul”. This position reverses Riley-Smith’s earlier opinion on this matter published in 1977: “We may conclude that Urban himself had not fixed on a definite terminology for the Indulgence and was probably unclear in his own mind about it (ID., What Were the Crusades? London 11977, 59). Riley-Smith’s most recent view on the Clermont indulgence is that it was “not really an indulgence at all”, but was “an authoritative pastoral statement” that permitted the Crusaders to engage in “an act of self-sanctification” (RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders [as in note 6], 68, 75; ID., The Idea of Crusading in the Charters of Early Crusaders, 1095-1102, in: Le Concile de Clermont de 1095 [as in note 57], 155-66, 162). 304 Paul E. Chevedden penances, with no reference to remission of sins, Erdmann concludes that the Clermont indulgence stipulated only the remission of penance imposed upon the sinner by the Church. What’s more, Urban’s contemporaries took no account of the Crusade indulgence as it was formulated by the Council of Clermont. “Not one of the contemporary reporters reproduced the official terminology” that referred to the remission of all penance. Instead, they embraced “the general belief that the crusade procured forgiveness of sins and the soul’s salvation”, which the Council of Clermont, presumably, had not granted. Then, in an apparent volte-face, Pope Urban was won over to this popular formulation of the Crusade indulgence and adopted the term remission of sins (remissio peccatorum) in his references to the Crusade indulgence following the Council of Clermont120. According to this reconstruction, the Crusade indulgence, as it came to be understood during the course of the “First” Crusade, was not the indulgence intended by Pope Urban or the Council of Clermont. The original indulgence is supposed to have been ignored and suppressed – either due to ignorance or expediency – and replaced by a new indulgence that the pope later endorsed. This scenario has been embraced by a number of scholars, many of whom have attempted to improve upon Erdmann’s explanation by furnishing additional details and arguments121. One can only admire the infinite ingenuity that has gone into the making of this reconstruction, but it depends on too many arbitrary assumptions. Was the Clermont indulgence really so difficult to understand? Was there actually such a wide gulf between “popular” and “élite” religion during the eleventh century that the popular mind simply could not grasp the indulgence 120 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 316-17; Eng. trans., 343-45. E. H. KANTOROWICZ, Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought, in: AHR 56 (1951) 472-92, 480-81; M AYER, Crusades, 21988 (as in note 7), 23-37, 94-95; H. ROSCHER, Papst Innocenz III. und die Kreuzzüge, Göttingen 1969 (= FKDG 21), 72-73; ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 341-50; JASPERT (as in note 10), 30-34. For a full discussion of this ingenious scenario and its many elaborations, see BYSTED (as in note 13), 31-49, which relates this account of the Crusade indulgence to the thesis advanced by Adolf Gottlob that the early indulgences were not intended to have a transcendental effect. ROBINSON, Papacy, 349-50, nicely sums up this scenario and links it to the thesis of Hans Eberhard Mayer that the Jerusalem Crusade was hijacked by popular preachers: “the papal curia held one view of the crusader’s spiritual privilege and the faithful held quite another … . Hans Eberhard Mayer argues that ‘right at the start of the crusading movement control had slipped out of the hands of the curia’: not only because popular preachers reinterpreted the commutation of penance [i.e., the Crusade indulgence] offered by the council of Clermont, but also because the crusaders reinterpreted the main objective of their enterprise”. 121 The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 305 promulgated at the Council of Clermont that apparently drew a sharp distinction between the “remission of penance” and the “remission of sins”? If Urban’s contemporaries could take into consideration the Kriegsziel and the Marschziel of the Jerusalem Crusade, would they not also be able to take into account the spiritual reward that was offered for this expedition, regardless of whether it was a “remission of penance” or a “remission of sins”? If the “First” Crusade did indeed stir men deeply, would this not impose on its contemporary reporters the necessity of reproducing the spiritual reward that it promised with some degree of accuracy?122 Since 122 For the versions of the Clermont indulgence (or promises of spiritual rewards) found in the reports of Urban’s 1095 crusading appeal, see (1) Gesta francorum et aliorum Hierosolymitanorum: The Deeds of the Franks and other Pilgrims to Jerusalem, ed. R. HILL, London - New York 1962, 1: Si quis animam suam saluam facere uellet, non dubitaret humiliter uiam incipere Domini (“If any man wants to save his soul, let him have no hesitation in taking the way of the Lord in humility”); (2) FULCHER OF CHARTRES, Fulcheri Carnotensis Historia Hierosolymitana (1095-1127): Mit Erläuterungen und einem Anhange, ed. H. HAGENMEYER, Heidelberg 1913, 135 (1.3.5): Cunctis autem illuc euntibus, si aut gradiendo aut tranfretando, sive contra paganos dimicando, vitam morte praepeditam finierint, remissio peccatorum praesens aderit (“To all those who set out thither, if they should lose their lives on the way by land or in crossing the sea or in fighting the pagans, immediate remission of sins will be given”); trans. ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 344; (3) ROBERT OF REIMS/THE MONK, Historia Iherosolimitana, in: Recueil des historiens des Croisades: Historiens occidentaux, ed. Académie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 5 vols., Paris 1844-95 (hereafter cited as RHC.Oc), 3: 729: Arripite igitur viam hanc in remissionem peccatorum vestrorum, securi de immarcesibili gloria [1 Pet 5: 4] regni coelorum (“So seize on this road to obtain the remission of your sins, sure in the indestructible glory of the Heavenly Kingdom”); trans. C. SWEETENHAM as Robert the Monk’s History of the First Crusade: Historia Iherosolimitana, Aldershot (Hants, England) 2005, 81; (4) BAUDRI DE BOURGEUIL/BALDRIC OF DOL, Historia Jerosolimitana, in: RHC.Oc 4: 15: Ceterum si vos citra mori contigerit, id ipsum autumate mori in via, si tamen in sua Christus vos invenerit militia … et vel victoriosi ad propria remeabitis, vel sanguine vestro purpurati, perenne bravium adipiscemini. … Via brevis est, labor permodicus est qui tamen immarcescibilem vobis rependet coronam. … Confessis peccatorum suorum ignominiam, securi de Christi celerem paciscimini veniam (“But if it befall you to die this side of it, be sure that to have died on the way is of equal value, if Christ shall find you in His army … or empurpled with your own blood, you will have gained everlasting glory. … Short is the way, little the labor, which, nevertheless, will repay you with the crown that fadeth not away [i.e., the crown of martyrdom]. … When they have confessed the disgrace of their sins, do you [the bishops], secure in Christ, grant them speedy pardon”); trans. E. PETERS (ed.), The First Crusade: The Cronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials, Philadelphia 21998, 32; (5) GUIBERT DE NOGENT, Dei gesta per Francos et cinq autres texts, ed. R. B. C. HUYGENS, Turnhout 1996 (= CChr.CM 127A), 113 (2.166-68): Nunc vobis bella proponimus, quae in se habent gloriosum martirii munus, quibus restat presentis et aeternae laudis titulus (“Now we propose for you battles 306 Paul E. Chevedden Urban had used the term remission of sins (remissio peccatorum) when referring to the Crusade indulgence, why is “the general belief that the crusade procured forgiveness of sins and the soul’s salvation” not considered to be the pope’s belief as well? It is of course impossible to deny that the Clermont indulgence may have been altered as Erdmann suggests, and plausible grounds may be alleged for the Clermont indulgence being the victim of fortuitous events. Indeed, Erdmann’s reconstruction of the Crusade indulgence is based entirely on direct evidence: the text of Canon 2 and the letters of Pope Urban. But the direct evidence can support more than one reconstruction. First, let us discard some of Erdmann’s arbitrary assumptions. Let us not assume that the Clermont indulgence was the result of a fortuitous series of events. Rather, let us assume that it was deliberately devised by the council fathers and that they had some purpose in mind when they granted a remission of all penance (omni penitentia) for everyone who heads for Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God (quicumque … ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Hierusalem profectus fuerit). Let us not assume that all the later formulations of the Clermont indulgence found in Urban II’s letters were guided by some fortuitous combination of events. Rather, let us assume that they were guided by a deliberate decision-making process, and that the pope had some design in mind when he set forth the indulgence in the way that he did. Finally, let us assume that there is an intelligible thread that runs through all of the expressions of the Clermont indulgence. The two modes of expression of the Clermont indulgence – “remission of penance” and “remission of sins” – may not be contradictory to one another, but may in fact represent different manifestations of the same indulgence. Urban formulated the Clermont indulgence both as a “remission of penance” and as a “remission of sins”. In his letter to all the faithful in Flanders written shortly after the Council of Clermont, he recounts that at a council held in Auvergne [i.e., the Council of Clermont], as is widely which offer the gift of glorious martyrdom, for which you will earn present and future praise”); trans. R. LEVINE as The Deeds of God through the Franks: A Translation of Guibert de Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos, Woodbridge (Suffolk) 1997, 43; (6) WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY , Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. MYNORS, completed by R. M. THOMSON - M. WINTERBOTTOM, 2 vols., Oxford 1998-99, 1: 602 (IV.347.9): Ituri et Christianitatem propugnaturi … habentes per Dei concessum et beati Petri priuilegium omnium absolutionem criminum (“Those who go and fight in defense of Christianity … enjoy by God’s grant and the privilege of St. Peter absolution from all their offences”); trans. Gesta regum Anglorum, 1: 603. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 307 known, we imposed on them the obligation to undertake such a military enterprise [i.e., a military undertaking to free the Churches of the East] for the remission of all their sins (pro remissione omnium peccatorum)123. Urban again refers to the Crusade indulgence as the remission of sins (in peccatorum remissionem precepimus) and as an indulgence of sins (peccatorum profecto suorum indulgentiam) in his letter to a number of Catalan counts, dating from c. July 1096, that admonishes them to remain in Spain in order to rebuild Tarragona and not to join the Jerusalem Crusade124. In September of 1096, Urban adopted the language of Canon 2 and framed the indulgence in terms of a full remission of penance in his letter to his supporters in Bologna: You should know, moreover, that if any men among you go there [Jerusalem] not because they desire earthly profit but only for the salvation of their souls and the liberation of the Church, we acting as much on our own authority as on that of all the archbishops and bishops in Gaul, through the mercy of almighty God and the prayers of the Catholic Church, relieve them of all penance imposed for their sins, of which they have made genuine and full confession, because they have risked their belongings and lives for the love of God and their neighbour125. Clearly, Urban saw no contradiction between the two formulations of the Crusade indulgence. The remission of penance made possible the remission of sins. These two actions were conjoined, not opposed. Urban could refer to the Crusade indulgence as a “remission of penance” and as a “remission of sins” with no hint of contradiction or ambiguity. The “remission of penance” does not preclude the “remission of sins”, nor does the “remission of sins” exclude the “remission of penance”. Urban, it appears, drew upon a tradition in which the Crusade indulgence could be expressed 123 Huiusmodi procinctum pro remissione omnium peccatorum suorum in Aruernensi concilio celebriter eis iniunximus, Urban to all the faithful in Flanders, December 1095; H. HAGENMEYER, Epistulae et chartae ad historiam primi belli sacri spectantes: Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088-1100, Innsbruck 1901, 136; trans. RILEY-SMITH - RILEY-SMITH (as in note 113), 38; PETERS (as in note 122), 42. 124 See above note 113 and text. 125 Sciatis autem eis omnibus, qui illuc [Hierusalem] non terreni commodi cupiditate sed pro sola animae suae salute et ecclesiae liberatione profecti fuerint, paenitentiam totam peccatorum, de quibus ueram et perfectam confessionem fecerint, per omnipotentis Dei misericordiam et ecclesiae catholicae preces tam nostra quam omnium paene archiepiscoporum et episcoporum qui in Galliis sunt auctoritate dimittimus, quoniam res et personas suas pro Dei et proximi caritate exposuerunt, Urban to his supporters in Bologna, 19 September 1096; H AGENMEYER, Epistulae (as in note 123), 137; trans. RILEY-SMITH - RILEY-SMITH (as in note 113), 39; PETERS (as in note 122), 44. 308 Paul E. Chevedden both as a “remission of penance” and as a “remission of sins”. The formula of Canon 2, pro omni penitentia ei reputetur, with the emphasis on the “remission of penance”, makes the indulgence applicable to those who fought in the Crusade and survived the experience. The council fathers, it seems, made a conscious decision to highlight the spiritual benefits that would accrue to those who survived the Crusade126. The novel feature of the Crusade indulgence was that it offered a spiritual reward to the survivors of the crusading enterprise, and this, apparently, is what the council fathers sought to emphasize. Even with such an emphasis, there was no implication that the “remission of penance” would in any way rule out the “remission of sins”. Rather, the “remission of penance” was a necessary precondition for the “remission of sins”. Orderic Vitalis explains that at the Council of Clermont Urban absolved all penitents from their sins from the moment that they took the cross of Christ and released them from their penances, realizing that those who undertook the Crusade would suffer from every kind of danger at almost all times, and would daily be tormented by changes of fortune, both good and ill, through which the ardent servants of Christ would be cleansed from all the guilt of their sins127. From Orderic’s account of events we can reconstruct how the Crusade indulgence was conferred at the Council of Clermont. The “penitents” in Orderic’s account are those Crusaders who had received the sacrament of Penance. Once the Crusaders had completed this requirement of the Crusade indulgence, the pope bestowed upon them general sacramental absolution and released them from their penances. Orderic’s account emphasizes the “remission of penance” and the remission of the guilt resulting from sins; in other words, the remission of the 126 BYSTED (as in note 13), 79: “In general, Urban was more focused on granting rewards to the survivors” of the Crusades. 127 Prouidus uero papa omnes qui congrua arma ferre poterant ad bellum contra inimicos Dei exciuit, et poenitentes cunctos ex illa hora qua crucem Domini sumerent ex auctoritate Dei ab omnibus peccatis suis absoluit, et ab omni grauedine quæ fit in ieiuniis aliisque macerationibus carnis pie relaxauit. Considerauit enim perspicaciter, ut prudens et benignus archiater: quod hi qui peregre proficiscerentur, in uia multis diutinisque discriminibus sepissime uexarentur, et multimodis casibus letis seu tristibus cotidie angerentur, pro quibus beniuoli uernulæ Christi a cunctis culparum sordibus expiarentur, ORDERIC VITALIS, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. CHIBNALL, 6 vols., Oxford 1969-80, 5: 1619 [IX.2]). Urban’s grant exempting the Crusaders “from any obligation to fast or mortify the flesh in other ways” (ab omni grauedine quæ fit in ieiuniis aliisque macerationibus carnis pie relaxauit) has been interpreted by Mayer as a remission of “all penance” (M AYER, Crusades, 21988 [as in note 7], 294 n. 15). The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 309 consequences of sin. The emphasis on the “remission of penance” is again seen in William of Tyre’s account of the Clermont indulgence. In his report of Urban’s conferment of the Crusade indulgence, the pope speaks first of a remission of penance, followed by an assurance of indulgence for sins and an eternal reward for those that die in true penitence on the Crusade: Herewith we, trusting in the mercy of God, and by the authority of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, do grant to faithful Christians who take up arms against the infidel and assume the burden of this pilgrimage, remission of the penance imposed upon them for their sins. Those who in true penitence die in this undertaking should not doubt that they shall receive indulgence for their sins and the fruit of an eternal reward128. 128 Nos autem de misericordia domini et beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli auctoritate confisi fidelibus christianis, qui contra eos arma susceperint et onus sibi huius peregrinationis assumpserint, iniunctas sibi pro suis delictis penitentias relaxamus, qui autem ibi in vera penitentia decesserint, et peccatorum indulgentiam et fructum eterne mercedis se non dubitent habituros, WILLIAM OF TYRE, Chronique [= Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum], ed. R. B. C. HUYGENS, 2 vols., Turnholt 1986 (= CChr.CM 63 and 63A), 1: 135 (1.15.109-15). This passage has been translated by Emily Babcock and August Krey as: “Herewith we … do grant … remission of the penance imposed upon them for their sins. Let not those who in true penitence depart thither doubt that they shall receive indulgence for their sins and the fruit of eternal reward” (WILLIAM OF TYRE, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans., E. A. BABCOCK and A. C. KREY, 2 vols., New York 1943 [= RoC 35], 1: 92). According to Bysted, William of Tyre’s version of Urban’s grant of indulgence at Clermont “resembles canon 27 of the Third Lateran Council almost verbatim” (BYSTED [as in note 13], 54). This, however, is untrue. The emphasis in the indulgenced grant of the Third Lateran Council is on the “remission of sins”, not on the “remission of penance”. The grant begins: “On these and on all the faithful, we enjoin, for the remission of sins (in remissionem peccatorum iniungimus), that they oppose this scourge with all their might and by arms protect the Christian people against them [i.e., the Albigensians]… . Those who in true sorrow for their sins die in such a conflict should not doubt that they will receive forgiveness for their sins (peccatorum indulgentiam) and the fruit of an eternal reward”. Only after speaking of the remission of sins and offering to those that die indulgence for their sins, does the text turn its attention to the remission of penance: Ipsis autem conctisque fidelibus in remissionem peccatorum iniungimus, ut tantis cladibus se viriliter opponant et contra eos armis populum christianum tueantur; confiscenturque eorum bona et liberum sit principibus huiuusmondi homines subicere servituti. Qui autem in vera poenitentia ibi decesserint, et peccatorum indulgentiam et fructum mercedis aeternae se non dubient percepturos. Nos etiam de misericordia Dei et beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli authoritate confisi, fidelibus christianis, qui contra eos arma susceperint et ad episcoporum seu aliorum praelatorum consilium ad eos certaverint expugnandos, biennium de poenitentia iniuncta relaxamus, aut si longiorem ibi moram habuerint, episcoporum discretioni, quibus huius rei cura fuerint iniuncta, committimus, ut ad eorum arbitrium secundum modum laboris major eis indulgentia tribuatur, Third Lateran Council (1179); TANNER (as in note 25), 1: 225 (c. 27). 310 Paul E. Chevedden In the first extant Crusade indulgence, Pope Alexander II had granted both a remission of penance and a remission of sins: penitentiam eis levamus et remissionem peccatorum facimus129. This practice is found in the twelfth century, but it is not commonplace. In 1101, Pope Paschal II (1099-1118) exhorted the people of León-Castile to not abandon [their] country because of the expedition to Jerusalem and commanded them to stay in [their] country [and] fight with all [their] strength against the Moabites [Almoravids] and the Moors [Spanish Muslims]. He characterized the Crusade as a “penance” for which the Castilians would receive remission of their sins: There with God’s help, you will do your penances. There you will receive the remission [of sins] and the grace of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and of their Apostolic Church130. In December 1118, Pope Gelasius II (1118-19) granted both a “remission of penance” and a “remission of sins” to the Crusaders besieging Zaragoza. To those that received the sacrament of penance and were killed in the expedition, he offered, by the merits of the saints and the prayers of the whole Catholic Church, release from the bonds of their sins (a suorum vinculis peccatorum absolvimus). To those that labored in the service of the Lord and survived the expedition, he offered remission and indulgence of their penances (poenitentiarum suarum remissionem et indulgentiam)131. Pope Alexander III (1159-81) granted in his 129 See above note 56 and text. Scripsimus enim uobis preterito tempore, ne Iherosolimitane expeditionis occasione partes uestras desereretis, quae Maurorum et Mohabitarum cotidianis incursionibus impugnantur… . Vobis ergo omnibus iterata preceptione precipimus, ut in uestris partibus persistentes Mohabitas et Mauros totis uiribus impugnetis, ibi largiente Deo uestras penitentias peragatis, ibi sanctorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli et apostolice eorum ecclesie remissionem et gratiam percipiatis, Paschal II to King Alfonso VI of León-Castile, 25 March 1101 (or 1108); PL 163: 64D-65A; E. FALQUE REY (ed.), Historia compostellana, Turnhout 1988 (= CChr.CM 70), 77-78 (1.39); ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 345-46; O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 34; BYSTED (as in note 13), 176-77, 251. 131 Et quoniam et vos ipsos, et vestra extremis objicere periculis decrevistis, si quis vestrum accepta de peccatis suis poenitentia in expeditione hac mortuus fuerit, nos eum sanctorum meritis, et totius Ecclesiae catholicae precibus, a suorum vinculis peccatorum absolvimus. Caeterum, qui pro eodem Domini servitio vel laborant, vel laboraverint, et qui praefatae urbis ecclesiae a Saracenis et Moabitis dirutae, unde reficiatur, et clericis ibi Deo famulantibus, unde pascantur, aliquid donant vel donaverint, secundum laborum suorum et beneficiorum suorum ecclesiae impensorum quantitatem, ad episcoporum arbitrium, in quorum parochiis degunt, poenitentiarum suarum remissionem et indulgentiam consequantur, Gelasius II to the Christian army besieging Zaragoza, 10 December 1118; Epistolae, PL 163: 508C-D; J. M. LACARRA (ed.), Documentos para el estudio de la reconquista y repoblación del Valle del 130 The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 311 famous crusading bull Inter omnia of 1169 remission of penance imposed by the priestly ministry that our predecessors, the Fathers of happy memory Urban and Eugenius, are known to have instituted so that whoever performs the prescribed work for gaining the indulgence shall rejoice in having obtained the remission of the penance imposed on him, and that, with contrition of heart and oral confession, this journey will have taken the place of his penance (satisfactionis) for the indulgence of his sins132. Here, a plenary indulgence of sins follows upon the remission of penance, as it surely did in the Clermont indulgence. In 1187, Pope Gregory VIII (1187) granted to those headed to Syria to roll back the conquests of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn a full remission of both penances and sins. To those who with contrite heart and humble spirit take up the work of this expedition and die in penitence for their sins and in right faith, he promised full indulgence for their crimes and eternal life. He assured all of the Crusaders that they would obtain a full remission of their penances: Whether they survive or die, they should realize that through our authority by the mercy of the Almighty and the apostles Peter and Paul they will have release from penance (satisfactionis) imposed for all their sins for which they have made a proper confession133. In 1195, Pope Celestine III (1191-98) promised in his Ebro, 2 vols., Zaragoza 1982-85, 1: 67-69, no. 54; ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 34546; O’CALLAGHAN (as in note 52), 37; BYSTED (as in note 13), 172, 177, 178, 201. 132 Nos autem sollicitudinem vestram favore apostolico prosequentes illis, qui pro divinitatis amore laborem hujus profectionis assumere et, quantum in se fuerit, implere studuerint, de indultae nobis a Domino auctoritatis officio, illam remissionem impositae poenitentiae per sacerdotale ministerium facimus, quam felicis memoriae Urbanus et Eugenius, patres et antecessores nostri temporibus suis statuisse noscuntur, ut videlicet qui ad defensionem terrae idoneus et ad hoc obsequium expeditus, suscepta poenitentia biennio ibi ad defensionem terrae permanserit et sudorem certaminis ad praeceptum regis et majorum terrae pro amore Christi portaverit, remissionem injunctae poenitentiae se laetetur adeptum, et cum contritione cordis et satisfactione oris profectionem istam satisfactionis loco ad suorum hanc indulgentiam peccatorum … , Alexander III, Inter omnia, 29 July 1169, PL 200: 600D-601A; ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 347; BYSTED (as in note 13), 184. 133 Eis autem qui corde contrito et humiliato spiritu laborem huius itineris assumpserint et in poenitentia peccatorum et fide recta decesserint, plenam suorum criminum indulgentiam et vitam pollicemur aeternam; sive autem supervixerint sive mortui fuerint, de omnibus peccatis suis, de quibus rectam confessionem fecerint, impositae satisfactionis relaxationem de omnipotentis dei misericordia et apostolorum Petri et Pauli auctoritate et nostra se noverint habituros, Gregory VIII, Audita tremendi, 29 October 1187, PL 202: 1542C; Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris, in: A. CHROUST (ed.), Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I, Berlin 1928 (= MGH.SRG 5), 10; ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 348; H. NICHOLSON, The Crusades, Westport (CT) 2004, 144; BYSTED (as in note 13), 186-87. 312 Paul E. Chevedden crusading bull Misericors et miserator to make that remission of penance imposed by the priestly ministry that our predecessors are known to have instituted in their day, so that those, who take up the work of this expedition with contrite heart and humble spirit and die in penitence for their sins and in right faith, shall have full indulgence of their crimes and eternal life134. These elaborate descriptions of the Crusade indulgence appear rather infrequently. Shorter and less elaborate formulations are the norm. Bysted has examined the indulgence formulas found in the papal proclamations of crusading indulgences and has divided them into two groups: those pertaining to a “remission of penance” (poenitentiam reputetur, poenitentiam dimittimus, poenitentiam remissionem, poenitentiam indulgemus/indulgentiam, poenitentiam relaxamus, satisfactionem relaxamus) and those pertaining to a “remission of sins” (remissio peccatorum/peccaminum, in/ pro remissione peccatorum, in remissionem peccatorum injungimus, venia peccatorum/peccaminum, peccatorum absolutionem, peccatorum indulgentiam, criminum indulgentiam, delictorum absolutionem, veniam delictorum)135. These formulas have been regarded as competing with one another. Bysted, for example, arranges the formulas of remission of sins and penances so as to exhibit opposite or contrasting properties, and Robinson observes that the outcome of the competition between the two formulas was the triumph of “popular crusading theory, promising the full remission of the temporal penalties due to sin” 136. Since remissio peccatorum-formulas are found in papal documents in far greater frequency than remissio poenitentiae-formulas, and since remissio peccatorum (or venia peccatorum) ultimately became the conventional expression for an indulgence, there has been a marked tendency to regard the two modes of expression of an indulgence as being polar to one another, rather than complementary. The investigation of the Crusade indulgence has largely ignored contextual analysis in favor of the sterile logic of inference and deduction. As a result, 134 Nos autem illis qui pro divinitatis amore laborem huius profectionis assumere et quantum in se fuerit implere studuerint, de indulto nobis a Deo auctoritatis officio illam remissionem impositae poenitentiae per sacerdotale ministerium facimus, quam praedecessores nostri noscuntur suis temporibus statuisse, ut videlicet qui corde contritio et humiliato spiritu laborem huius itineris assumpserint, et in poenitentia peccatorum et fide recta decesserint, plenam suorum criminum indulgentiam et vitam propter hoc consequantur aeternam, Celestine III, Misericors et miserator, 25 July 1195; JL 17270; PL 206: 1109C; ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 348, 349; BYSTED (as in note 13), 187. 135 See ibid., 308-09, Appendix B, Table 1, “The Formulas of Remission of Sins and Penances”. 136 Ibid.; ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 347. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 313 the indulgence promised in Canon 2 has become particularly problematic because (1) it pertains to the “remission of penance”, not the “remission of sins”, and (2) it uses an expression for the indulgence – poenitentia reputetur – that “not one of the contemporary reporters [of Urban’s crusading summons] reproduced” and that not one of the formulas for an indulgence ever replicated137. These apparent difficulties are easily resolved. First, the various popes who issued Crusade indulgences during the eleventh and twelfth centuries did not aspire to develop a consistent and coherent set of formulas that could be readily interpreted by the modern researcher. They expressed, often in truncated form, an idea that contemporaries had no difficulty understanding 138. Second, the two modes of expression for an indulgence – the “remission of penance” and the “remission of sins”– were inseparably linked139. There was no dichotomy between the “remission of penance” and the “remission of sins”. Rather, the “remission of penance” and the “remission of sins” were the final steps, or stages, of an indulgence rite that included: (1) contrition or conversion (conversus fuerit; contritione cordis); (2) auricular confession (confessionis; confiteatur; satisfactione oris); (3) the imposition of penance (penitentiae imponatur); (4) the acceptance of penance (paenitentiam; suscepta poenitentia); (5) the remission of penance (penitentiam eis levamus; remissionem impositae poenitentiae; remissionem injunctae poenitentiae; satisfactionis relaxationem); and, finally (6) the remission of sins (indulgentiam delictorum; absolvimus; remissionem peccatorum; indulgentiam peccatorum; plenam suorum criminum indulgentiam)140. 137 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 316; Eng. trans., 343; BYSTED (as in note 13), 212. 138 See above notes 118 and 119 and text. 139 The inseparability of these two modes of expression should not be confused with the erroneous idea that “release from penance and remission of sins were two aspects of the same idea and effectively meant the same thing” (RILEY-SMITH, Death [as in note 119], 17; ID., Idea of Crusading [as in note 119], 162), or that “remissio peccatorum was equivalent to remissio poenitentiae” (BULL, Knightly Piety [as in note 55], 171; see also POSCHMANN [as in note 11], 54-62). 140 This reconstruction of the rite of the Crusade indulgence is based upon the first holy war indulgence granted by Pope John VIII in 878 (see above note 20 and text), the first Crusade indulgence granted by Pope Alexander II in 1063 (see above note 56 and text), the Crusade indulgence granted by Pope Alexander III in his crusading bull Inter omnia of 29 July 1169 (see above note 132 and text), and the Crusade indulgence granted by Pope Gregory VIII in his crusading bull Audita tremendi of 29 October 1187 (see above note 133 and text). 314 Paul E. Chevedden Urban used the formula remissionem peccatorum when referring to the Clermont indulgence, so it is clear that the Crusade indulgence was regarded as having an effect before God to erase the consequences of sin and was not merely a remission of the temporal punishments that the Church had the power to impose141. The significance of the two forms of expression for the Crusade indulgence pertains to the fundamental difference between the two groups of Crusaders that benefited from this indulgence: those that fought and survived and those that perished. The “remission of penance” had no value for those who died on Crusade because death had already freed them from their penances. Their promise of indulgence could only be expressed in the set of formulas pertaining to the “remission of sins”. Survivors, however, could be assured of the Crusade indulgence by either set of formulas – the one pertaining to the “remission of penance” or the other pertaining to the “remission of sins”. When the indulgence was referred to solely by an expression denoting the “remission of penance”, as is the case in Canon 2, this did not preclude the “remission of sins”. In fact, the remission of penance directly facilitates the remission of sins by removing the remnants of sin. Taking part in a Crusade worked like a penance, and once the penitent was purified by “penance”, through the performance of the indulgenced work, he was reconciled to God and could gain the remission [of his sins] and the grace of the holy apostles Peter and Paul and of their Apostolic Church142. Much of the historical debate about the Crusade indulgence has been devoted to establishing whether or not this indulgence remitted all the punishment imposed by God for sin or initially remitted only those temporal punishments that the Church had the power to impose143. According to Gottlob, “the transcendental efficacy of the indulgence was emphasized for the first time in the Second Crusade” 144. But the transcendental efficacy of both the holy war indulgence and the Crusade indulgence was emphasized from the start. Popes who granted these indulgences did so in the knowledge that those who performed the indulgenced work and observed the prescribed conditions for gaining the indulgence would obtain re141 See above note 123 and text. See above note 130 and text. 143 BYSTED (as in note 13), 31: “One question that has been haunting research and debate on the crusade indulgences in particular is the question of whether they have always been intended to have a transcendental effect or if they only gained this quality somewhere along the history of their development”. 144 GOTTLOB (as in note 12), 105. 142 The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 315 mission of their sins from God. The “Gottlob thesis” ran into serious difficulties because its proponents had to reject the transcendental character of both the holy war indulgence and the early Crusade indulgence. The Clermont indulgence was naturally caught up in this controversy, and efforts were made to deny its transcendental efficacy. Many scholars have interpreted the Clermont indulgence as a commutation of penance in order to rule out any transcendental effect that the indulgence might have145. A commutation of penance was a substitution of one form of penance (e.g., fasting) for another (e.g., the recitation of prayers or the giving of alms to the poor) that could be agreed upon by the confessor and the penitent. Indulgences, however, “did not seek an equivalent substitution for the penance” imposed by a confessor 146. Instead, indulgences were grants by the Church of remissions before God of the consequences of sin. The recipient usually fulfilled the required conditions for gaining an indulgence by performing a work deemed beneficial to the Church and the Christian community. Canon 2 does not state the Crusade indulgence in terms of commutation. Rather, it is the Church that imputes a full remission of penance to all those who fulfill the specific conditions of the indulgence set forth in Canon 2. Canon 2 leaves no doubt about how the Crusade indulgence is to be obtained. To gain the indulgence, a person must perform the acts enjoined in Canon 2 – ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Hierusalem profectus fuerit – and must do so in the manner required by the conciliar decree – pro sola devotione. The Council of Clermont attached the Crusade indulgence to 145 ROSCHER, Papst Innocenz III (as in note 121), 72-73; BRUNDAGE, Medieval Canon Law (as in note 4), 146; E.-D. HEHL, Kirche und Krieg im 12. Jahrhundert: Studien zu kanon. Recht u. polit. Wirklichkeit, Stuttgart 1980 (= MGMA 19), 127; ID., Was ist eigentlich ein Kreuzzug? HZ 259 (1994), 297-336, 312-18; M AYER, Crusades, 21988 (as in note 7), 3031; BECKER, Urban II (as in note 19), 383, 389, 396, 406; ROBINSON, Papacy (as in note 50), 343-50; RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 68-69; ID., Idea of Crusading (as in note 119), 162; ID., What Were the Crusades? Houndmills (Basingstoke, Hampshire) 2 1992, 60; ID., What Were the Crusades? San Francisco 32002, 61-64. Bysted seems to be the only scholar that upholds the transcendental efficacy of the Clermont indulgence while regarding it as a commutation of penance. According to her, “the indulgence remained essentially a commutation of penance”, but this in no way meant “that the papal crusade indulgences did not make claims to have an effect before God” (BYSTED [as in note 13], 37, 57, 75, 218). 146 Bysted points out that indulgences “did not seek an equivalent substitution for the penance”, and yet she maintains that “the indulgence remained essentially a commutation of penance” (ibid., 26, 218). 316 Paul E. Chevedden the expedition to liberate the Church of God and not to a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Despite the clarity of the canonical enactment, this has not prevented the Clermont indulgence from being misconstrued. Cowdrey asserts that the spiritual benefits of the Crusade were tied to the completion of a pilgrimage147. Mayer claims that “the idea of indulgence only became really effective when it was linked with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem”. The indulgence remained ineffective when applied elsewhere, Mayer contends, because “the full effects of the indulgence were felt only when it became linked with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem” 148. “The council of Clermont”, according to Riley-Smith, “was careful to attach the penance involved to the pilgrimage itself”, and the penance, he claims, was “primarily justified through its association with pilgrimage” 149. Ernest Blake maintains that the “moral discipline” stipulated in the Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont – pro sola devotione – is that “associated with pilgrimage” 150. Giles Constable states that the Crusade indulgence “was to be won by the good deed of the pilgrimage in itself” 151. Jean Richard contends that “the pope offered the crusaders the benefit of an indulgence defined as that which was attached to the visit to the tomb of Christ” 152. Jean Flori argues “that it is due to its character as a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher” that a crusading expedition can profit from spiritual privileges 153. 147 H. E. J. COWDREY, Pope Urban II and the Idea of the Crusade, in: StMed 36 (1995) 721-42, 729: “Urban … assigned [Jerusalem] as the goal alike of his military campaign to free the eastern churches and of a pilgrimage the completion of which would ensure the spiritual benefits that he held out”. Cowdrey, however, does not maintain a consistent position on this matter. He can just as easily argue that Urban “attached to the expedition the spiritual benefits of a pilgrimage” and did not attach spiritual benefits to the completion of a pilgrimage, since the text of Canon 2 maintains that “the spiritual benefits to be gained from reaching Jerusalem are attached to an intention to liberate it, not merely to journey there” (COWDREY, Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the First Crusade [as in note 108], 186, 188). 148 MAYER, Crusades, 21988 (as in note 7), 26. 149 RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 66-67. 150 E. O. BLAKE, The Formation of the ‘Crusade Idea’, in: JEH 21 (January 1970) 11-31, 18. 151 G. CONSTABLE, Medieval Charters as a Source for the History of the Crusades, in: P. W. EDBURY (ed.), Crusade and Settlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of Crusades and the Latin East and Presented to R. C. Smail, Cardiff 1985, 73-89, 82. 152 J. RICHARD, Histoire des croisades, Paris 1996; trans. J. BIRRELL as The Crusades, c. 1071-c. 1291, Cambridge 1999, 23. 153 FLORI, Redéfinition (as in note 8), 348. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 317 These assertions misrepresent the text of Canon 2. Even though there was a correlation between the military objective of the “First” Crusade – Jerusalem – and a pilgrimage objective – the Holy Sepulcher – the Holy Land Crusade did not become an indulgenced act because of this correlation. The Jerusalem Crusade became an indulgenced act as a result of a papal decree, Canon 2. This decree linked the Crusade indulgence, not to a pilgrimage, but to a military expedition. Participants in the “First” Crusade were fully aware that penitential benefits were attached to a military expedition, not to a pilgrimage. The author of the Monte Cassino Chronicle states that the princes who joined the Holy Land expedition vowed on the authority and with the advice of Pope Urban to take the road overseas to snatch the Sepulchre of the Lord from the Muslims in penitence and for the remission of their sins154. Tancred Marchisus, the future Crusade leader, was moved by Urban’s call to arms in the service of Christ because it held out a two-fold reason for fighting: the pope’s grant of remission of all their sins and his appeal to all Christians to go out to fight the gentiles155. A charter of 1096 from the monastery of Cluny speaks of two brothers who were going with all others on the expedition to Jerusalem for the remission of their sins156. Riley-Smith 154 Qui videlicet propterea, quod de innumeris sceleribus digne apud suos penitere nequibant et quod sine armis utpote seculares inter notos conversari vehementer erubescebant, auctoritate atque consilio sancte memorie pape Urbani prudentis plane et vere apostolici viri, qui tunc temporis pro negotiis ecclesie partes illas adierat, ultramarinum iter ad sepulcrum Domini a Saracenis eripeindum in penitentiam et remissionem peccatorum suorum illis iniunctum fide promptissima se arripere spoponderunt certi et indubii redditi, quod, quicquid adversi, quicquid periculi, quicquid denique incommodi illis contingeret, loco penitentie a Domino recipiendum, ut tamen se a preteritis nequitiis continerent, Chronik von Montecassino (as in note 100), 475; trans. RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 69. 155 At postquam Urbani papae sententia universis Christianorum gentilia expugnaturis peccatorum omnium remissionem ascripsit, tunc demum quasi sopiti prius experrecta est viri strenuitas, vires assumptae, oculi aperti, audacia germinata. Prius namque, ut praescriptum est, animus ejus in bivium secabatur, ambiguus ultrius sequeretur vestigia, Evangelii, an mundi? Experientia vero armorum ad Christi obsequium revocata, supra credibile virum accendit militandi duplicata occasio, Ralph of Caen, Gesta Tancredi, in: RHC.Oc 3: 606; trans. RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 70. 156 Bernardus et Oddo, fraters, pro peccatorum nostrorum remissione, cum caeteris in expedicione Hierosolimam proficiscentes, Bernard and Odo, brothers, charter for the monastery of Cluny, c. 1096; A. BERNARD - A. BRUEL (eds.), Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Cluny, 6 vols., Paris 1876-1903, 5: 59, no. 3712; COWDREY, Pope Urban II’s Preaching of the First Crusade (as in note 108), 182; ID., Cluny and the First Crusade, in: RBen 83 (1973) 285-311, 303; RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 67. For a full translation of this 318 Paul E. Chevedden himself provides evidence that the Council of Clermont tied the Crusade indulgence to an expedition, not to a pilgrimage. “Two of the eye-witnesses at Clermont”, he maintains, “reported that [Urban] assured his audience that any remission of sins for those who died after taking the cross but before reaching Jerusalem would be granted immediately rather than being dependent on the completion of the penitential act” 157. The Crusade indulgence was clearly tied to a military expedition, not to a pilgrimage. The First Lateran Council, convened by Pope Calixtus II in 1123, offers support for this interpretation. It prescribes that those who go to Jerusalem and make a serious effort to either defend Christians or fight Saracens are to receive remission of their sins … just as has been decreed by our lord pope Urban158. Conclusion The Crusade indulgence sprang from the holy war indulgence; it did not evolve from other indulgences or spiritual rewards159. Like crusading itself, it sprang from the on-going conflict between Islam and Christendom in the Mediterranean world, from the actual historical experience of a prolonged struggle. Urban II’s Clermont indulgence was modeled on the first Crusade indulgence issued by Pope Alexander II in c. 1063 that promised a full remission of both penances and sins. Since we know that the Crusade charter, see J. P. PHILLIPS, The Crusades, 1095-1197, Harlow (England) 2002, 166, which renders in expeditione Hierosolimam as “on the journey to Jerusalem”. 157 RILEY-SMITH, First Crusaders (as in note 6), 71; ID., Idea of Crusading (as in note 119), 162. The two eyewitnesses at Clermont that Riley-Smith speaks of are Fulcher of Chartres and Baudri de Bourgeuil/Baldric of Dol whose statements on the Clermont indulgence are provided above in note 122. 158 Eis qui in Hierosolymam proficiscuntur et ad christianam gentem defendendam et tyrannidem infidelium debellandam efficaciter auxilium praebuerint, suorum peccatorum remissionem concedimus et domos et familias atque omnia bona eorum in beati Petri et Romanae ecclesiae protectione, sicut a domino nostro papa Urbano statutum fuit, suscipimus, First Lateran Council (1123); TANNER (as in note 25), 1: 191-92 (c. 10); GOÑI GAZTAMBIDE (as in note 41), 76-77; R. SOMERVILLE, Clermont 1095: Crusade and Canons, in: L. GARCÍAGUIJARRO RAMOS (ed.), La Primera Cruzada novecientos años después: el Concilio de Clermont y los orígenes del movimiento cruzado, Madrid 1997, 63-77, 65 n. 10. 159 On the continuity between the holy war indulgence and the Crusade indulgence, see DELARUELLE (as in note 21), 78; J. RICHARD , Urbain II, la prédication de la croisade et la définition de l’indulgence, in: E.-D. HEHL - H. SEIBERT - F. STAAB (eds.), Deus qui mutat tempora (as in note 48), 129-35, 131-32. Others disagree; cf. PAULUS (as in note 11), 1: 134, which contends that the Crusade indulgence arose out of commutations and redemptions of penance. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 319 indulgence was so successful, an intriguing question remains: Why should the Crusade indulgence not have been from the start the institutional vehicle promoting the Crusade? Erdmann argues that the first Crusade indulgence introduced by Pope Alexander II in c. 1063 was not sufficient by itself to provide the stimulus required in order to produce the First Crusade. Not even the emergence of a crusading institution was enough to produce the First Crusade. Other stimuli were needed. Chief among them was the Jerusalem pilgrimage. Yet even the primary stimulus of the “unification of holy war with pilgrimage” was not quite sufficient to empower the Crusade indulgence. Only “when the crusading vow and the cross were taken” did the Crusade indulgence take effect160. Erdmann assumes that the papacy stood as a barrier to the development of crusading 161. But it was not enough for the papacy to remove itself as an obstacle, thereby eliminating itself as the principle impediment preventing crusading. It had to come up with a new idea that would incite a passive arms-bearing and religiously unsophisticated class of knights to undertake the Crusade. Only when Urban hit upon the “electrifying appeal” of “an armed pilgrimage” and threw together a concoction of crusading institutions did crusading go forward162. Since the papacy blocked the development of crusading until Urban opened the crusading “dam” in 1095163, Erdmann maintains that the Crusade indul160 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 320: “Diese Vereinigung [von heiligem Krieg und Wallfahrt] ist auch für den Ablaß von Bedeutung gewesen. Dieser hatte zwar, wie wir gesehen haben, schon eine Tradition im Bereich des ritterlichen Kreuzzugsgedankens, aber seine besondere Popularität beim ersten Kreuzzug beruhte doch wohl darauf, daß er sich mit den volkstümlichen Vorstellungen von der büßerischen Verdienstlichkeit der Jerusalem-Wallfahrt begegnete. Dementsprechend trat er mit dem Augenblick des Kreuzgelübdes und der Kreuznahme in Kraft, wodurch seine praktische Wirkung besonders gesteigert wurde”; Eng. trans., 348. 161 Ibid., 284; Eng. trans., 306: “Christian knighthood and holy war had developed into a strong and widespread movement before the close of the eleventh century, but the course of this movement was still blocked by the dichotomy between hierarchical and popular purposes; what were there to be: wars for the sake of the papacy against its Christian opponents, or wars for the sake of all Christendom against the external enemy? Militia sancti Petri or war upon the infidels?” See also ibid., 210-11, 246-47; Eng. trans., 227-28, 265. 162 Ibid., 306-07; Eng. trans., 331-32. 163 Ibid., 325; Eng. trans., 354: “The crusading idea had attained great force in the 1060s; Gregory VII had attempted to divert it into a separate and far too narrow channel and thus, in fact, had dammed it up. Urban II understood at what point the dam must be opened and how to unite other waters with the mainstream”. 320 Paul E. Chevedden gence, which had been called into existence in c. 1063, could still be the institutional vehicle promoting the Crusade from the start because the crusading movement, according to the conventional view, made its first start in 1095, despite many earlier false starts. Other scholars refuse to acknowledge the Barbastro indulgence of c. 1063 as “the first papal crusading indulgence whose text we possess” and equate the first Crusade indulgence with the Clermont indulgence. For these scholars, there is no question about whether or not the Crusade indulgence was the institutional vehicle promoting the Crusade from the very start. The Crusade indulgence and the Crusade emerged at the same moment in time, on 27 November 1095, when Pope Urban II issued his famous crusading appeal at Clermont, so the Crusade indulgence naturally became the institutional vehicle that promoted the Crusade from the beginning 164. In order to establish the Crusade indulgence as the institutional vehicle that promoted the Crusade from the start, Erdmann misrepresents the development of crusading by placing the Crusade anachronistically after the appearance of the Crusade indulgence. Other scholars, intent upon the same enterprise, have misrepresented the development of the Crusade indulgence by failing to recognize the Barbastro indulgence as “the first papal crusading indulgence whose text we possess”. Certainly the question Why should the Crusade indulgence not have been from the start the institutional vehicle promoting the Crusade? poses no difficulties for the adherents of the “Big Bang” theory of the Crusade. The Crusade and its institutions coincide. Once this theory is discarded, however, the question poses a significant challenge. But an answer has been provided by Varro in his Antiquities: the Crusade must first exist before it can proceed to create its institutions. Crusading institutions were not contemporaneous with the emergence of crusading, but they arose quickly enough. The transition from “holy war” to “crusade” did not at first entail any radical change in the ongoing war with Islam. No crusading institutions were introduced when the Norman-papal axis was formed in 1059 with a plan to retake Islamic Sicily. When the crusading plan became a crusading reality in 1061, there was still no hint of crusading theories or crusading 164 This position is the conventional view of the development of crusading and the crusading indulgence and is held by a wide number of scholars; see, for example, VILLEY, La croisade (as in note 55), 141-51; RILEY-SMITH, What Were the Crusades? San Francisco 3 2002, 3-5, 55-56, 59-64; FLORI, Redéfinition (as in note 8), 334, 340, 348, 349; TYERMAN, God’s War (as in note 9), 63, 64, 67, 74. The Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade Indulgence 321 institutions. What new conceptualizations and new structural arrangements were introduced were established subsequent to the onset of the Crusade and were incorporated piece by piece and not at the same moment. They were adopted as occasion offered and were integrated into the existing mode of Christian holy war. With regards to the Crusade indulgence, it became the institutional vehicle that promoted crusading from nearly the start of the enterprise – from c. 1063 onward – and it developed continuously over the generations and centuries 165. The Crusade initially represented no sudden jump or abrupt transition in the cultural or political history of the Latin West. Crusading was a direct continuation of an ongoing holy war against Islam. There is therefore no need to postulate a sudden turning point in the evolution of this conflict, only a continuous process of development. There might be some kind of threshold at which the interaction between Islam and Western Christendom would quicken, thus accelerating the already progressive tendency – such as the capture of Palermo in 1072, the fall of Toledo in 1085, and the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 – but the changes were developmental, not “sprunghaft”. Erdmann’s great insight was to view the process that created crusading as progressive. The Crusade, according to Erdmann, “was not a beginning but the culmination of a long development”. He points out that the Crusade had “links to the previous age” and that it was the conclusion of “an evolution, but never a leap or a new beginning” 166. Scholars have been searching diligently for the origin of the Crusade – that something “new” that contained the germs of the future. What Erdmann found, over the course of nine chapters, was that the Crusade was linked to the past more than it was to the future167. The common features of the crusading era proved to be inherent in the pre-crusading era more than they were part of a take-off for the future. The Crusade was not a harbinger of a coming epoch, but the outgrowth of an old epoch. It was the culmination of a very long historical process that had its roots deep in the past. This is 165 Others disagree; cf. BYSTED (as in note 13), 11, 26-27, 50, 69-71, 74, 79, 81, which offers a discontinuous view of the Crusade indulgence. 166 ERDMANN, Kreuzzugsgedanke (as in note 5), 317: “Überall stellten wir die Anknüpfung an die ältere Zeit fest, wohl mit manchen Ergänzungen und Bereicherungen, gleichsam als Abschluß einer Entwicklung, aber nirgends einen Sprung oder einen Neuanfang”; Eng. trans., 345; Ibid., 320: “Der Kreuzzug Urbans II. stellt nicht einen Anfang dar, sondern einen Höhepunkt der Entwicklung”; Eng. trans., 348. 167 Ibid., 1-283; Eng. trans., 1-305. 322 Paul E. Chevedden perhaps the most fundamental intellectual originality of “Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens” (“The Origin of the Idea of Crusade”). In Chapter Ten, however, Erdmann felt the need to postulate a sudden turning point in the evolution of the conflict between Islam and Christendom in order to explain how crusading became differentiated from the holy wars that preceded it168. But the change from a pre-crusading Europe to a crusading Europe did not come about as a sudden turning point. In fact, this change was so imperceptible that it was hardly noticed at the time. The crucial change was not the abandonment of the Church position on violence or the embrace of a new idea (“war-pilgrimage”), as Erdmann had thought, but papal participation in the war with Islam from a position of independence and leadership vis-à-vis the major secular authorities of the day. Had the Church remained under secular control there would have been no transnational body to take up the struggle with Islam. An independent papacy exercising jurisdictional control over Western Christendom was an indispensable requirement for Crusade. Doubtless the immemorial conflict between Islam and Christendom would have continued if the Latin Church had not attained independence from secular control, but this struggle would have continued in a different way and followed a path quite unlike that of crusading. The secular powers of the day may never have been capable of establishing an effective coalition to confront the Islamic challenge, due to political and territorial rivalry, and the great task of channeling and directing the conflict with the Islamic world might never have found a champion. 168 Ibid., 284-325; Eng. trans., 306-54. Erdmann’s efforts to strike a balance between a perception of the Crusade as an essentially continuous affair with one that is essentially discontinuous was not successful. Chapter Ten left Erdmann’s work dominated by the discontinuity view of the Crusade, and it is this view that scholars have accepted as Erdmann’s thesis (see CHEVEDDEN, Islamic Interpretation of the Crusade [as in note 40], 122-36). This thesis has tied the Crusade down to a Procrustean bed into which complex developments have been trimmed to fit Erdmann’s “war-pilgrimage” doctrine.