Religious motives

What you need to know - Religious Motives: the concept of 'just war'; the impact of the papal reform movement on ideas of penance and remission of sins; guarantees of plenary indulgence; the aim of freeing Jerusalem; papal support for the Crusades; the influence of preachers, including Bernard of Clairvaux;the Fourth Crusade and Innocent III.

It was rooted in the act of pilgrimage supported by the Church's Gregorian reforms. Ecclesiastical reforms during the early medieval period caused drastic changes in Church governance and its relationship with the imperial sovereign.

The rise of Seljuk Turks in Western and Central Asia by the late 10th century and the defeat of the Byzantine Emperor led to the call for the first crusading movement from European Christians.

Concept of 'just war'

The idea of a 'just war' was popularised by St. Augustine of Hippo. He wrote that warfare was inevitable in specific conditions. He believed that a war could be 'just' given the following:

Just cause = If there was a previous act of aggression. The crusading movement was categorised as Christian defence against the Muslims.

Legitimate authority = A war was just if it was authorised by popes and secular priests who were believed by Augustine as holder of power granted by God.

Right intention = In Christian belief, participants such as crusaders should be led by love and charity, rather than hatred or anger.

Augustine of Hippo

We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace. - Augustine

Papal reform movement

When the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III deposed three rival claimants to the papal throne, he installed a choice of his own and one was Pope Leo IX, who came into papacy in 1048. A great promoter of the Cluniac Reform, he enforced the following:

• Attempt to end the practice of simony
• Abolition of clerical marriage and concubinage
• Establishment of Sacred College of Cardinals
• End of attendant abuses

→ Simony or the buying and selling of spiritual offices

→ Clerks and laymen were prohibited to marry

→ Ensured independence of papal elections from imperial interference

→ Offspring of clergy attempting to inherit Church properties

Aside from filling Romanesque churches with liturgies in gold altar vessels, fine tapestries and stained glass, Cluniacs promoted pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the Peace of God Movement.

The Peace of God, or Pax Dei__, was a proclamation prohibiting nobles from invading churches, abusing women (both virgins and widows) and children, burning of houses and striking merchants. All were punishable by excommunication. Due to its independence, all provisions were made directly for the pope without the control of secular rulers.

Leo IX (left) consecrating the rebuilt monastery church of St.-Arnould-de-Metz, which is being offered to him by Abbot Warinus of Metz, 11th-century codex

The heaviest years of pilgrimage took place during the 11th and 12th centuries. Priests taught people about purgatory, a place where people's souls are burnt after death because of sin.

In order to please God and avoid the fires of purgatory, people went on pilgrimage. Pilgrims travelled 3000 miles to the Holy Land, while some went to Rome where the pope lived. With much conviction to rescue the sacred areas, pilgrims became warriors and turned pilgrimage into a military campaign known as the Crusades.

Medieval pilgrimage, British Library Egerton, 1069

Papal selection under the Gregorian reform

In 1049, the struggle between Pope Gregory VII and the young King Henry IV of Germany started when Henry IV insisted on the long-standing royal right to invest an ecclesiastical office.

Papal selection before the reform

Effects: Religious schism, papal claimants known as antipopes, weakened the papacy

Papal selection under the reform

Effects: Defined a more independent papacy

Influence of preachers

In late 1095, Peter the Hermit, one of the most charismatic holy men in France set out from Berry to Germany until he reached Cologne in 1096. He preached the crusade and gathered thousands of men, women and children, all almost unarmed and untrained.

His band became known as the People's Crusade or Peasants' Crusade due to a lack of organisation and training.

Compared to Peter's Crusade, the Bishop of le Puy organised more united crusader armies, known as the Princes' Crusade, who set off from different parts of Europe.

The First Crusade assembly called by Bernard was held in Vézelay, a French city.

Unlike the First Crusade, the Second Crusade was dominantly initiated by political leaders and was attended by important dignitaries.

Bernard travelled Europe and sought the participation of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine (France), Conrad III (Germany) and Count Thierry of Alsace of Flanders.

Depiction of Bernard of Clairvaux preaching the Second Crusade

Quantum praedecessores, 1145

On 1 December 1145, Pope Eugenius III issued a papal bull calling for the Second Crusade.

Pope Eugenius III. Term as pope: 1145-1153

'We exhort therefore all of you in God, we ask and command, and, for the remission of sins enjoin: that those who are of God, and, above all, the greater men and the nobles do manfully gird themselves; and that you strive so to oppose the multitude of the infidels, who rejoice at the time in a victory gained over us, and so to defend the oriental church – freed from their tyranny by so great an outpouring of the blood of your fathers, as we have said, - and to snatch many thousands of your captive brothers from their hands' - An extract from the Papal Bull, Quantum Praedecessores

King Louis VII of France (1137-1180)

Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine

Known as the Crusader Queen

King Conrad III of Germany

Afonso I of Portugal

Unlike Urban II, Bernard used the cross as a primary means of gaining absolution for sin and repentance. Aside from the common people, the call for the Second Crusade was largely supported by royalties, bishops and nobles.

Throughout his lifetime, Bernard served as adviser to five popes.

Of mighty soldier, oh man of war, you now have something to fight for. If you win it will be glorious. If you die fighting for Jerusalem, you will win a place in heaven. - Bernard of Clairvaux, 1140

Summary of the Crusades' religious motives:

• Papal indulgences were offered to all who vowed to make an armed pilgrimage in order to save the Holy Land.
• Some crusaders believed that they should reach Christ's tomb in order to receive the crusade indulgence.
• A reward for the penitent's imitation of Christ's sufferings.