Download PDF | Rebecca Rist - The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198-1245-Bloomsbury Academic (2009).
289 Pages
Preface
This study of papal crusading policy examines the relationship between the papacy and what I have termed ‘internal’ crusades during the period 1198–1245. An ‘internal’ crusade is defi ned in this work as a holy war which was authorized by the popes of the fi rst half of the thirteenth century and which was fought within Christian Europe against those whom the papacy perceived to be foes of Christendom, for the recovery of Christian property or in defence of the Church or Christian people.1 For this holy war, combatants took vows to fi ght and were granted by the papacy the same plenary indulgence as was also being granted by popes during the fi rst half of the thirteenth century to those who embarked on a crusade to the Holy Land. By granting the plenary indulgence for fi ghting, popes signalled that they regarded the wars which they authorized against heretics and political enemies as not only meritorious campaigns but as deserving the same spiritual privileges as crusades to the East.
This study is therefore not concerned with those crusades which popes authorized against Muslim enemies in the East and Spain, nor with crusades authorized against pagans on the borders of Europe. Rather it focuses on crusades authorized by the papacy against heretical groups in Christian Europe and against political enemies whom popes often viewed as heretics. Yet, in spite of its undoubted Europe-wide signifi cance and an increasing recognition that the period 1198–1245 marks the beginning of a crucial change in papal policy underpinned by canon law, the relationship between popes and the crusades which they authorized within Christian Europe during these years has attracted relatively little attention in modern British scholarship. This book discusses the development of crusades authorized within Europe throughout the period through analysis of the extensive source material drawn from enregistered papal letters, placing them fi rmly in the context of ecclesiastical legislation, canon law, chronicles and other contemporary evidence. It thereby seeks to contribute to our understanding of the complex politics, theology and rhetoric that underlay the papacy’s call for European crusades in the fi rst half of the thirteenth century.
The popes who authorized these ‘internal’ crusades between 1198 and 1245 were Innocent III (1198–1216), Honorius III (1216–1227), Gregory IX (1227–1241) and Innocent IV (1243–1254). The pontifi cate of Celestine IV (1241) was extremely short and there are no extant letters concerned with the authorization of such crusades during his brief period as pope. The date 1198 marks the beginning of the pontifi cate of Innocent III, an enthusiast for crusading who authorized the Albigensian Crusade against Cathars in the south of France. The year 1245 is where this study ends because the formal deposition of the emperor Frederick II at the First Council of Lyon, two years after the election of Innocent IV, was a signifi cant milestone in the history of papal calls for crusades against the Hohenstaufen dynasty.
The principal sources for this study of papal policy are the letters of the popes themselves authorizing and supporting crusades against those they deemed enemies of the Church. From these letters a picture can be constructed of how the popes regarded heretics and political opponents and how they viewed these enemies in the context of their authorization of crusades. The work explores whether the popes themselves thought that such ‘internal’ enemies should be treated in the same way as ‘ extra-liminal’ enemies of the Church, in particular the majority of Muslims who lived outside Christian Europe. It asks whether the pronouncements of the different popes elected between 1198 and 1245 reveal the pragmatic policies of individual popes, or an overriding papal vision regarding the status and treatment of ‘internal’ enemies. It considers whether the papacy envisaged a theoretical hierarchy of crusades, and in particular the status which popes afforded crusades against heretics and political enemies compared with crusades against Muslims in the Holy Land.
It analyses the extent to which popes deliberately branded political enemies as heretics in their correspondence in order to encourage crusading. It also considers the degree to which popes intimated by the grant of spiritual and material incentives that the crusades which they authorized within Europe were a priority, and examines whether they regarded them as spiritually less inherently meritorious enterprises than those to the East. Certain aspects of thirteenth-century papal policy with regard to crusading, in particular the bestowal of indulgences or the special privileges granted for the protection of persons and property by the Holy See for the duration of a crusade, continue to be popular subjects of crusade scholarship. 2 There has been, however, little recent detailed study of papal letters concerned with crusades within Europe and of ecclesiastical legislation about heretics and the Church’s political enemies which papal correspondence both refl ected and helped to engender. A further aim of this study is therefore to investigate the amount of infl uence and control the popes of the fi rst half of the thirteenth century were able to exert over the crusades which they authorized in Europe and to assess whether such crusades proved an effective vehicle for the pursuit of papal aims. It considers whether an increasing recognition by popes of the limited effect of crusading as a means of dealing with heretics was crucial in the development of inquisitorial processes in the south of France and Germany as an alternative way of coping with the problem of heresy.
Innocent III and Honorius III authorized and promoted the Albigensian Crusade against heretics in the south of France. Gregory IX was concerned not only with this but also authorized crusades against groups accused of heresy in Germany, Hungary and Bosnia. The correspondence of all three popes comprised both ‘general’ letters addressed to the Christian faithful throughout the whole of France and other parts of Europe and letters addressed to specifi c kings, legates, prelates and to crusaders themselves. As well as investigating the formulation of the crusading indulgence, this study considers the rhetorical language of a long-established style of papal letter used to authorize crusades, and the use of metaphors, similes and formulaic phrases to describe heresy and heretics. And it assesses the correspondence of Innocent III relating to what has often been described as the fi rst ‘political crusade’, which was directed against his opponent Markward of Anweiler, former imperial vicar of Sicily during the reign of the emperor Henry VI. It also examines letters of Gregory IX and Innocent IV which called for spiritual and military action against another emperor, Frederick II, as part of an attempt by these popes to weaken his authority and to defend the papal states. From an examination of their letters conclusions may be drawn about the use of the crusade by popes as a political weapon at the height of the medieval papacy’s temporal and political power.
The study therefore allows for fresh insights into the characters and pontifi cates of some of the most infl uential popes of the High Middle Ages. In 1235 Gregory IX authorized a crusade to Constantinople against Orthodox Greek Christians and encouraged those who had not yet taken vows to go on his proposed crusade to the Holy Land to campaign on behalf of the Latin Empire instead.3 The Latin Empire comprised a group of extensive territories under Latin Christian rule which had been created after the conquest of Constantinople by the Venetians and soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in April 1204.4 Although it could be argued that, since it was authorized against fellow Christians, this crusade to Constantinople was also a crusade against ‘internal’ enemies – as distinct from a crusade against ‘external’ Muslims and pagans – it is not analysed in this book for the simple reason that Gregory IX did not regard the Orthodox Greeks against whom the crusade to Constantinople was launched as heretics but rather as schismatics who had long ago broken away from the authority of Rome. Furthermore, the crusade to Constantinople was not launched within Christian Europe, the frontiers of which were an extension of, yet based upon, those of the Roman Patriarchate. Rather it was authorized to defend those Latin Christians who lived well outside medieval Europe’s geographical, religious and psychological boundaries.
Introduction
Carl Erdmann, one of the founding fathers of the modern study of crusading history, wrote in his infl uential work The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, published in 1935: There is no truth to the common opinion that the idea of crusade against heretics was a corruption of the Palestinian Crusade. On the contrary, such a crusade against heretics was envisioned from the start.1 He argued that although from late antiquity the Church had endorsed wars against heretics – regarded as an ‘internal’ threat to Christian society – much earlier than it had accepted those against ‘external’ pagans and Muslims, in the eleventh century popes realized that the idea of a crusade against heretics could not engender popular support. Erdmann declared that: In the eleventh century, the idea of a papal crusade against heresy, directed against a Christian prince, could not set in motion the mass of knights, nor could it win the support of the clergy as a whole. He suggested that in order to become ‘a motive force in history’ the idea of crusade had to be transformed by the papacy and given a new goal: the recovery of the Holy Land. Erdmann claimed that this transformation was successfully achieved by Urban II (1088–1099) when he preached the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095. Erdmann’s defi nition of a crusade was that of any holy war authorized by the papacy. This defi nition has not been accepted by a number of more recent crusade historians who have argued that, besides their authorization by the papacy, other criteria, in particular the taking of crusade vows and the grant by popes of a plenary indulgence, were an essential part of crusading.2
Indeed papal authorization, the grant of the plenary indulgence and the taking of crusade vows by participants are the three criteria used in this study to defi ne crusades in the fi rst half of the thirteenth century as a particular type of holy war. Yet Erdmann’s work was groundbreaking because it helped to establish the idea that crusades authorized by the papacy within Europe were different from, and yet fundamentally related to, crusades to the Holy Land. This idea was also present in the writings of earlier twentieth-century crusade scholars, most notably Pissard, who discussed the origins and development of the so-called ‘political crusades’ which took place in the thirteenth century.3 Papal fears about the spread of the Cathar heresy in Europe; the ability of successive popes to wield temporal power in the papal states; an increasing number of calls by these same popes for military action against their political enemies with a view to maintaining temporal power: all these factors combined to encourage popes in the fi rst half of the thirteenth century to use the idea of a crusade, already employed against Muslims in the East, to authorize wars against enemies within Europe.
In the thirteenth century the papacy was perceived by Christians throughout Western Europe as the ultimate spiritual authority on earth and was at the height of its temporal jurisdiction. Besides exercising lordship over territories stretching across central Italy, the popes saw it as part of the duty of the papal offi ce to intervene directly in the political activities of princes.4 Innocent III was actively involved in politics, writing letters such as ‘Novit ille’ and ‘Per venerabilem’ in which he used legal arguments to claim the right, as the ultimate spiritual authority in Christian Europe, and indeed in the whole world, to intervene in temporal disputes – most famously and signifi cantly in cases involving any ‘matter of sin’ (‘ratione peccati’).5 Despite their very different characters, concerns and ambitions, his successors on the papal throne, Honorius III (1216–1227), Gregory IX (1227–1241) and Innocent IV (1243–1254) – the pontifi cate of Celestine IV (1241) was very short and it is therefore very diffi cult to ascertain what direction his political activities might have taken – also participated fully in temporal affairs and in particular became embroiled in a long-running dispute with the German emperor Frederick II.
Their claims for the papacy’s ultimate authority to intervene in the disputes of princes encouraged popes to call for crusades against their political enemies. These ‘political crusades’, and also those crusades that popes authorized against heretics, were, as we shall see, united by certain common features. This study is therefore about the ‘idea’ of crusade – in other words what the popes believed they were doing when they called for people to take up arms against heretics and enemies of the papacy. It proposes that this subject requires a fresh approach – a detailed examination of papal letters concerned with these crusades which are a unique and invaluable source of evidence for understanding papal thought. Papal correspondence included both those general letters addressed to all the Christian faithful that popes expected would be read out by the clergy in churches throughout Europe and even used as guides by crusade preachers, and many other letters which were despatched from the curia to individuals, in particular to the rulers of Europe and to the clergy .
CRUSADES AGAINST HERETICS
The period 1198–1245 was crucial for the development of crusading because for the fi rst time popes began to authorize and promote crusades against heretics.6 This was a signifi cant decision, since they had previously concentrated their energies on authorizing crusades against Muslims in the Holy Land and Spain, and to a much lesser extent, against pagans in the Baltic. Why did popes turn their attention to authorizing military action against a new target and how did papal crusading policy change and develop to include these new crusades? Although papal authorization of crusades against heretics only began in the thirteenth century, heresy had long been a great concern of the Church. In the eleventh century, reforming popes had been extremely anxious about simony (the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offi ce), to the extent that Simonists were often branded as heretics.7 From the late eleventh to mid-twelfth century the Church was worried about specifi c heresiarchs – men such as Henry of Lausanne, Peter of Bruys, Eon de l’Etoile and Arnold of Brescia who preached unorthodox theology and attracted followers.8 But in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century fear of heresy centred on the Cathars, and to a lesser extent the Waldensians.9
The Cathars, a group of heretics who in their most extreme form espoused dualist beliefs, began to establish themselves in western Europe by the middle of the twelfth century and by the end of that century were found in Flanders, Germany, Italy and France. The Waldensians, followers of a certain Peter Waldo (d 1216), impugned the validity of sacraments administered by unworthy priests and decried the veneration of saints and relics. They, too, spread to southern France, Spain, northern Italy and Germany. The Third Lateran Council (1179) had voiced the Church’s increasing preoccupation with the activities of these heretics in the south of France, while specifi cally papal concern about these and other heretical groups had been expressed in the decree ‘Ad abolendam’ (1184) of Lucius III (1181–1185).10 In The Formation of a Persecuting Society, Robert Moore argued that the overriding reason why these heretics and other minority groups began to be persecuted from the eleventh century onwards was that majority society, and in particular a literate and therefore elite social group, could assert and consolidate its own power by defi ning itself against the ‘Other’.11 Yet this interpretation failed to take into account the papacy’s genuine fear about the effect the spread of heresy in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries would have on Christianity. Although historians dispute the actual numbers of heretics in the south of France, their correspondence leaves us in no doubt that popes were greatly alarmed and horrifi ed by what they saw, correctly or incorrectly, as a real threat to the orthodox teachings of Catholic Christianity in the West. Papal fears were echoed by a large number of the Western European clergy in their preaching and by canon lawyers and theologians in their writings. Some of these men may indeed have worried that, if heretics complained about the oppressive hierarchy of the Church, their own authority would be questioned. But for many clergymen their greatest concern was that the truth of Christianity, which they believed the Church had safeguarded for centuries, would be undermined by heretical doctrines. Hence their endorsement of the constitutions of Lateran III (1179) and of Lateran IV (1215) about heresy and their support for the preaching missions of Bernard of Clairvaux and Henry of Marcy to the south of France.12 It was not therefore surprising that the papacy showed ambivalence and even uncertainty in its attitude towards heretical groups. At times it sought to limit any damage to Christianity by pursuing a policy of deliberately encouraging heretics to be incorporated into the Church, while at the same time condemning them if they continued to follow their own doctrines.13 In particular, the Cathar heresy, especially in its absolute dualist form, was seen as a signifi cant threat to Catholicism, because it was so radically opposed to Christianity.14 It was worrying and frustrating for popes to see southern Frenchmen and Italians, illiterate and ignorant of basic Catholic theology, seduced by what they considered to be irrational and pernicious ideas and indoctrinated into deliberately and provocatively anti-Christian beliefs. While, in order to cope with this problem of heresy, both ecclesiastical and secular legislation against heretics continued to grow during the twelfth and early thirteenth century, Christian society was becoming increasingly accustomed to frequent papal calls for crusades against Muslims. Since Urban II had preached the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095, there had been continuous crusade activity to the East.15 Even if they or their family members had not been on crusade themselves, many western Christians had heard tales of the crusader states and the activities of the military orders in the East to protect places of pilgrimage and to ensure the survival of a western presence in the places of Christ’s life and Passion. When popes called for fresh forces of crusaders they always began their general letters by recounting the current, often disastrous, situation in the East. Gregory VIII (1187) painted an apocalyptic picture of the loss of Jerusalem to Saladin in his general letter ‘Audita tremendi’ (1187), hoping by his passionate language to stir up a desire to crusade.16 Popes knew that the faithful regarded the fate of the Holy Land as integral to their own Christian identity and that they therefore wished to be kept abreast of events, even those developing in distant lands. In striking contrast, the idea of popes authorizing crusades against heretics was unfamiliar to Christians. But Innocent III, the fi rst pope to authorize such a crusade, was fascinated by heresy and wished to defi ne, to a much greater extent than his predecessors, what it meant to be a heretic. His decretal ‘Vergentis in senium’ (1199), addressed in the fi rst instance to the clergy and people of Viterbo, and written in response to the growing problem of heresy in Italy, contained the famous simile of the heretic committing treason against God as a vassal might commit treason against his master. Innocent was here attempting to make heresy more understandable to the Christian faithful by using an analogy which would strike a chord with those who heard the letter delivered in the churches of Viterbo.17 Innocent was not employing this simile cynically. He truly believed that heresy was an iniquitous crime, and treason against God. Indeed his obsession with heresy – echoed in contemporary conciliar legislation – was apparent in his constant use of metaphors and similes in his correspondence to describe heretics and his insistence that those who supported them should also be punished. He understood that heresy could not grow unless it had active backing. He therefore emphasized that supporters of heretics were as pernicious to Christian society as the culprits themselves. Following Innocent’s lead, subsequent popes also sought to inspire the Christian faithful to take part in crusades against heresy. Here the enemy was not the hated Muslim infi del, who had at different times impeded pilgrimage, upset the Byzantine Empire, caused havoc in the crusader states or retaken Jerusalem, but rather heretical groups living within Christian Europe. To call for crusades against heretics seemed an obvious progression to many Christians, both clergy and laymen, since they viewed heretical beliefs as perverted and believed that heretics and their supporters disrupted and damaged the spiritual and temporal framework of medieval society. Yet in the absence of a tradition of crusading against heretics it was diffi cult for the papacy to justify and explain these crusades to Christians as pilgrimages – as the papacy had done for crusades to the Holy Land from Urban II onwards.18 It was not therefore surprising that popes deliberately used the same language when calling for crusades against this new enemy as they had always done when calling for crusades to the East. They wanted to reassure the faithful of the similarity of both enterprises. These popes had been trained as clergymen to honour tradition, to emphasize continuity, and to ensure that papal policy evolved slowly and deliberately. Believing that the wisdom of the Holy Spirit was gradually revealed to the Church throughout the ages, they were therefore extremely careful to follow the language of their predecessors when calling for crusades against a new enemy. And since some of these popes were also trained lawyers, their pronouncements deliberately refl ected their understanding of canon law and were steeped in that tradition. Rather like artisans working for a major artist in a workshop, notaries and scribes at the curia drafted papal letters with the deliberate aim of refl ecting continuity, not only between different popes but between themselves as secretaries. Papal correspondence was a highly formulaic creation of the curia refl ecting a standard style of composition developed over many centuries – which only increased the popes’ natural conservatism. Indeed papal letters were carefully divided into different sections, the arrenga, narratio and dispositio, and each section employed typical formulae.19 The narratio frequently contained parts of the original letter of petition which had been sent to the curia, while in the arrenga and the dispositio the pope might set out his personal views, but always in accordance with accepted theological and legal statements on the subject. So when thirteenth-century popes called for crusades against heretics they were not seeking to redefi ne crusading. Papal authorization, the taking of vows and the grant of the plenary indulgence all remained central to their idea of what constituted a crusade. Rather, popes were aiming to convince Christians of the need for crusades against a new type of enemy. The necessity for the continual presence of the military orders in the Holy Land was testimony to the diffi culty of persuading crusaders to remain in the East. Now popes also wanted to persuade Christians to fi ght against heretics in Europe. They needed to reassure Christians that they would gain the same spiritual privileges, and that their enterprise was no less worthy than that against the infi del. This idea of crusading armies fi ghting within Europe rather than in the East was new and unfamiliar. Admittedly there were ongoing crusades in Spain and the Baltic, but these were far away, on the frontiers of Europe and against traditional targets – Muslims and pagans. Both the clergy and the laity must have wondered whether crusades against neighbouring heretics could really be as important as defending the places of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection in the Holy Land and what would be the practical as well as spiritual benefi ts of taking part in such ventures. In order to convince the Christian faithful that taking part in crusades within Europe was indeed worthwhile, popes deliberately employed the same language as they used when authorizing crusades against Muslims in the East. They knew that if there was to be any hope of involving large crusader armies, they had to sell the enterprise to the Christian faithful. It was very diffi cult to sustain a crusade against heretics for any long period. Indeed, despite the southern French clergy’s best efforts and in particular the decree of papal legates in 1210 that crusaders must do a minimum of forty days’ service to earn the plenary indulgence, Simon de Montfort, appointed leader of the Albigensian Crusade, struggled to maintain a standing army in the south of France.20 Yet although the idea of crusading against heretics was new, the papacy’s involvement in holy wars against its enemies – whether perceived or actual – was not. The idea of the Church threatened by heresy had its foundations in the fi fth-century writings of the Church fathers and in the letters of papal predecessors. Canon law collections, and in particular Gratian’s ‘Concordia discordantium canonum’ of circa 1140 which recorded papal letters, conciliar legislation and the pronouncements of the Church fathers, revealed a long history of holy violence against heretics and schismatics.21 In particular, the Church’s early declarations about just violence, including letters of St Augustine of Hippo (384–430) about the correct treatment of Donatist heretics in Christian society, were carefully recorded in Causa 23 and 24 of the Decretum, and were highly infl uential in forming twelfth- and thirteenth-century popes’ beliefs about the treatment of heretics and the justifi cation of force.22 The Donatists had challenged the spiritual authority of clergy who had been apostates under the persecution of the emperor Diocletian (303–305). This had led them to the belief that the particular character of the clergyman, rather than his offi ce as priest, gave validity to the celebration of the Sacraments – a view refuted by the majority of orthodox Catholics and for which the Donatists suffered persecution by the Roman authorities. The dualist beliefs of the Cathars which confronted Christian Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries presented major similarities to these Donatist beliefs as recorded in Gratian’s Decretum – which meant the Church already had examples and precedents to follow. So, when authorizing crusades to counter heresy, popes borrowed ideas from their predecessors’ long experience of authorizing crusades against Muslims in the East, as well as drawing on a wealth of material from canon law collections which justifi ed military action not only against infi dels but also against heretics. It was not surprising that Innocent led the way in authorizing these crusades against heretics. He was acutely aware that secular power had failed to deal with the problem of heresy in the south of France. His natural dynamism meant that he threw himself wholeheartedly into every concern of the Church, whether this was pastoral reform, the growth of canon law, the development of bureaucratic institutions at the papal curia, disputes between temporal lords, or the foundation of new religious orders.23 His authorization of the Fourth and Fifth crusades, his encouragement of crusading in the Baltic, his widening of the scope of crusading by allowing for the redemption and commutation of vows, his permitting crusaders to take part in campaigns even without the permission of their wives: all testify to his favouring crusading as a way of dealing with the Church’s – and therefore in his eyes Christianity’s – enemies. His decision to use crusades against heretics was innovative but not surprising, considering both his fascination with crusading and his fi rm belief that it could be effective in harnessing secular support for the papacy’s causes. Innocent wished to use such crusades to combat heretics and their supporters in the south of France. But he also had further aims for these crusades. He wanted to reassert the papacy’s authority over crusading after the disastrous events of the Fourth Crusade where he had lost control and been unable to prevent the diversion of the crusade armies to Zara and Constantinople.24 He wished, too, to show that the Church was unifi ed in its struggle against heresy – a serious threat against which he believed the papacy must harness the help of temporal powers. He also felt the urgent need to assert the authority of the papacy in the French south, and ensure that throughout France the clergy refused to tolerate heresy in their dioceses and parishes. An early manifestation of this latter policy at the beginning of his pontifi cate was his depriving bishops and clergy of their offi ce when he believed they were doing little to tackle heresy in their areas of jurisdiction. Innocent’s subsequent decision to favour crusading against heretics, as well as teaching and preaching, was not therefore a radical departure but rather a continuation of these aims. Indeed, although the death of his legate Peter of Castelnau in 1208 was a catalyst for his decision to call for a crusade, he had already tried several years previously to secure the military involvement of the king of France and promised spiritual privileges to those who would fi ght against heretics.25 According to the Church’s teaching, rooted in pronouncements of the Church fathers and in particular St Augustine, violence was not intrinsically wrong but morally neutral; the legitimacy of its use in a just cause depended on the intentions of the participants.26 Believing that he was acting with right intention for the good of the ‘societas Christiana’, Innocent therefore saw no reason not to call for military action against heretics in the south of France. Yet although Innocent had the theory to back him up, he did not give enough serious consideration to what a crusade against heretics would entail and he made serious misjudgements about the long-term consequences of the campaign. Crusading might be successful when properly organized against Muslims in the East, but it would prove much less so against heretics who were sheltered and supported by local communities. Although he had no previous experience on which to base his conclusion, Innocent believed, as did his successor, Honorius III, that crusading was the right way to tackle heresy in the south of France. Added to this, Innocent was not a good judge of character, as his trust in Otto of Brunswick, claimant to the imperial throne in the early years of his pontifi cate had testifi ed – and this was to cause him yet more diffi culties when dealing with the leaders of the Albigensian Crusade.27 Furthermore, Innocent was impatient for quick results – he wanted to see the fruits of his work against heresy during his own pontifi cate. Preaching and teaching were long-term projects, part of a wider mission to impart to illiterate and ignorant people in the south of France the theology and beliefs of the Christian faith and to convince them that they made more sense than dualism. The process was a slow one since many were suspicious of the Church’s attempts to expound Christianity, and disillusioned with its hierarchical structure and close connections to temporal authorities. The preaching mission sent by Innocent early in his pontifi cate did not fare well, because the Cistercians were much too associated with the ruling classes and elites of northern France.28 Complex theology about the nature of the Sacraments expounded by senior clergymen lacked the mass appeal of the Christian message exemplifi ed by the life of Jesus. By contrast, Dominic Guzman and his followers, who with Innocent’s blessing took over from the Cistercians in preaching in the south of France, were seen by their simple lifestyles to be living the apostolic life in the true spirit of the New Testament – something much favoured in an age fascinated by the idea of the poverty of Christ and enthusiastic to return to a literal interpretation of the words of the Gospels. Yet, even so, Innocent still wanted quicker results against heresy in the south of France and he came to believe these would best be achieved by means of a crusade. Indeed, Innocent wished to control closely the course of the crusade that he authorized in the south of France, just as he later also wanted to control every aspect of the planning of the Fifth Crusade to the East. He was dissatisfi ed with episcopal inquisitions, previously the main method of dealing with heretics, and realized that even if bishops had the inclination, they did not have the time to launch enquiries into heresy in their dioceses – a dissatisfaction later echoed by Gregory IX. Indeed, although episcopal inquisitions continued on a small scale during his pontifi cate, Gregory himself encouraged much of the work of enquiring into heresy to be done not by local bishops but by Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors.29 But, unlike his predecessor, Gregory soon also realized that crusading was not proving a very effective tool against heretics in the south of France and recognized that it was just as likely to drive heretical movements underground and encourage resistance as to deal with the problem effectively. Of course Gregory had the benefi t of hindsight, since by the time he was elected in 1227, crusading had continued sporadically in the south of France for almost 20 years. The crusade leader Simon de Montfort, and following his death his son Amalric, had encountered continuous diffi culty in raising suffi cient numbers of troops – testimony to a lack of widespread support for the crusade.30 Furthermore, a great number of ‘bona fi de’ Christians were inevitably killed when a town supposed to contain heretics was ransacked or burnt. Although some clergymen were more concerned about the fate of orthodox Christians than others – if Cesarius of Heisterbach is to be believed, the matter was of little concern to the papal legate Arnald Amalric – it is likely that the popes realized that such killings alienated the support of some Frenchmen.31 So Gregory and his papal successors turned to inquisition instead as a more effective method of dealing with heresy in the south of France.32 They understood the importance of encouraging local support against heretics and the need to set up inquisitorial procedures which would invite informers. Yet although Gregory increasingly favoured inquisitorial procedures in the south of France over crusades, he nevertheless granted indulgences for military campaigns against supposed heretics in other parts of Europe.33 His letters authorizing these ventures granted different grades of spiritual rewards for different campaigns. In several instances he eventually granted the plenary indulgence for those who made a vow to crusade, just as he did for crusading to the East. As we shall see, he considered there to be a hierarchy with regard to military campaigns in terms of spiritual merit and that the highest form of military campaign that a pope could authorize was a crusade. Just as popes had their own agendas for authorizing these crusades against heretics, so the local clergy often had their own political as well as religious reasons for supporting them. Furthermore, the crusades were orchestrated to a great extent by local magnates embroiled in local politics; they appealed to the pope, often via the clergy, to validate their military action. Since the higher clergy and magnates often came from the same families and interrelated networks, they often shared common ‘political’ as well as ‘religious’ goals. And at times the clergy came under immense pressure to seek papal authorization for crusades against heresy.34 Yet these infl uences and pressures did not lessen the fact that, like the popes in Rome, the clergy, in particular the bishops, were themselves extremely worried about heretics in their dioceses. Papal authorization of crusades in the south of France encouraged the clergy to support military action against those perceived as the Church’s enemies. Perturbed by heresies in their local area – whether in Germany, Italy or Bosnia – the clergy were often heartened by the idea that they might persuade popes to authorize a crusade against particular heretical groups. And they were pleased that the laity was encouraged to join in the Church’s struggle to eradicate heretics by the papacy’s grant of spiritual privileges and in particular the crusade indulgence. So the interaction between the clergy and the papacy in its authorization of crusades was extremely complex. It is very diffi cult to determine from papal corre spond ence alone whether those accused of heresy, for example in Bosnia, were in fact heretics or merely ignorant Catholics.35 Indeed, the clergy were deeply disturbed not only by heretics who espoused dualistic beliefs but by the great ignorance of correct Catholic teaching which they found in their areas of jurisdiction. Certainly in the case of Bosnia, prelates may have considered ignorance of orthodox Catholic beliefs as much a threat to Christian society as dualism. It is therefore possible that when the clergy wrote letters to the papal curia in Rome they deliberately encouraged popes to think that ignorant Catholics were heretics in order to encourage them to authorize crusades. Certainly popes continued throughout the thirteenth century to grant the plenary indulgence for crusades within Europe and to state categorically that it was the same indulgence as granted for those to the Holy Land. This refl ected their desire to emphasize that these crusades were not only holy but also meritorious – in other words, enterprises which would actually contribute to the salvation of their participants. Since it remained the standard by which all other crusades were judged, they continually referred to the Holy Land in the formulation of the plenary indulgence. Papal letters always described the plenary indulgence as the same as that which was granted for the Holy Land. By contrast, popes never stated that the plenary indulgence for a crusade against heretics was the same as that which was granted for a crusade in Spain or in the Baltic, although they granted the plenary indulgence for crusades in both these theatres of war. In other words, it was the example of the Holy Land crusade, rather than crusading in Spain or the Baltic, which popes continuously used to compare the different crusades and to reassure the Christian faithful of the holiness of their cause. Such a policy of deliberately invoking the Holy Land showed not only the importance that popes gave to it and their determination that it should remain at the fore, but also that they had understood what the Christian faithful wished either to read in their letters or hear preached. Popes were careful to emphasize the needs of the Holy Land even when they wished to prioritize other crusades. Indeed, as we shall see, although at the beginning of his pontifi cate Honorius III wished to promote the Albigensian Crusade and to refocus energies there, he was nevertheless careful to maintain his predecessor’s insistence that the Holy Land should not be forgotten and that nothing must jeopardize crusading in the East.36 It was also important for the popes to distinguish between a hierarchy of spiritual merit and a hierarchy of importance for crusading. Although the Holy Land crusade was the standard by which popes judged other crusades, they did not think that crusades to the East were of greater spiritual worth. By bestowing the same plenary indulgence for crusades against heretics as was bestowed for crusades against Muslims in the Holy Land, they emphasized that they were granting the same full remission of the temporal punishment owed for sin. Thus in theory the person who died crusading against heretics would go straight to heaven rather than spend time in purgatory, just like his counterpart crusading in the East. In terms of spiritual worth, the rewards were the same. Yet although popes made clear that there was no hierarchy of spiritual rewards, they certainly believed in the importance of prioritizing different crusades at different times. Sometimes popes wished the energies of Christian Europe to be focused on the Albigensian Crusade, sometimes on Spain, sometimes on the Baltic, sometimes on crusades against political enemies. They emphasized these priorities in their correspondence. Nevertheless, despite this ‘pluralism’ of approach, popes continued to remind the faithful of the need for the crusade to the Holy Land. As we shall discuss, Innocent III would even claim in a letter of 1213 to the dean of Speyer that the Holy Land crusade was of more merit than a crusade against heretics in the south of France.37 This has worried historians since it seems to contradict the fact that during his pontifi cate Innocent promised the same plenary indulgence for a number of different crusades, not just those to the East. In 1213, however, he wanted to emphasize to the dean that the papacy’s priority was now the Holy Land crusade. He may also have wished to confi rm that there was something particularly special about taking part in crusades to the East, an idea to which we shall return.
THE ‘POLITICAL CRUSADES’
When calling for crusades against heretics, popes feared that the spread and dominance of heresy in certain parts of Europe might undermine the Catholic faith. By contrast, when authorizing crusades against their political enemies, papal anxiety was focused on the survival and growth of the papal states, since these territories helped to protect the autonomy of the papacy and therefore allowed it to exploit what it believed to be its unique position as the spiritual leader of Christian society.38 It is still a matter of contention at what period the term ‘papal states’ may be used to describe those areas where the pope was traditionally overlord, but certainly by the beginning of the thirteenth century popes were great feudatories in central Italy.39 It is not surprising that popes sought to ensure the consolidation of these territories. In the eleventh and twelfth century Rome had often proved factious, and faction fi ghting among the Roman aristocracy meant popes often felt the need to escape to the surrounding countryside and to seek protection elsewhere. Long ago popes had realized that to ensure the papacy’s survival they needed a power-base in central Italy and champions of their cause. Indeed, in the eleventh century Nicholas II (1058–1061) had recognized that the Normans had come to stay in southern Italy and had deliberately sought them out as protectors of the papacy.40 The papal states, therefore, allowed popes to assert themselves as temporal lords in their own right, with all that entailed in terms of revenues and land. And by increasing the prestige of the papacy, the territories also increased popes’ bargaining power with temporal princes and magnates, who respected them as powerful lords as well as spiritual leaders. In an age where military strength was decisive, it was crucial for the papacy that popes be honoured like any other feudal lords and that they be seen by their enemies as able to harness military support from vassals and adherents who would fi ght on their behalf. In this sense the thirteenth-century papacy was not very different from the reform papacy of the eleventh century, which had relied on benevolent benefactors such as Mathilda of Tuscany for fi nancial and, even more importantly, military support.41 Yet in calling for crusades specifi cally against political opponents who threatened the papal states, thirteenth-century popes were doing something new. Just as with the crusades against heretics, these popes needed to convince the Christian faithful of the legitimacy of authorizing a crusade against enemies close at hand rather than Muslims in the East. They realized that to encourage the faithful to take part in campaigns in Italy it was important to suggest that such opponents were as threatening as more traditional targets of crusades. And since they wished to stress continuity with their predecessors and to move cautiously, popes deliberately used the same language and expressions to describe crusades against political enemies as they used about crusades to the Holy Land. By deliberately referring to their enemies as heretics and worse than infi dels, they emphasized continuity both with crusades to counter heresy and crusading to the East. They therefore described political enemies in their correspondence as being as dangerous as Saracens.42 Or they claimed that they were impeding help reaching the East, and thus, like the Muslims, intent on damaging the cause of the Holy Land.43 They stressed that political enemies were as important an enemy for Christians as the infi del: although they did not attack the places of Christ’s life and Passion, they were equally pernicious because intent on injuring the papacy and therefore the Church itself. Gregory IX and Innocent IV, as well as their supporters, frequently referred to Frederick II of Hohenstaufen as a heretic.44 Popes were well aware of what resonated with the Christian faithful and that Frederick was an easy target. He might co-operate with the Church in pursuing heretics, but he was nevertheless the subject of wild rumours about his intellectual interests and religious beliefs.45 It was felt by many that somehow he was not a true Christian emperor in keeping with his age. As we shall see, delaying the time of his departure on crusade in the 1220s only added to the doubts surrounding him, and Gregory IX used this to his advantage. So references to the Holy Land and the Muslim threat were a convenient way of harnessing military support for crusades against political enemies. Since both were part of God’s plan for salvation, popes saw no contradiction between helping the Holy Land and helping the papacy. The need to protect the papacy, the protector of the Church and therefore of Christianity itself, was as strong a reason to crusade, they believed, as the need to protect Christians from the infi del. Popes claimed that political enemies were directly impeding help for the Holy Land through their military presence in central and southern Italy. They also believed that political enemies were impeding it indirectly, since by seeking to encroach on papal territory they were undermining the power and authority of the pope, one of whose duties was to call for crusades. Popes feared Markward of Anweiler and Frederick II might damage the papacy’s territorial power base which buttressed their claim to ultimate spiritual authority in the ‘societas Christiana’. They were encouraged in this fear by many clergy who wished to see the papacy triumph over the empire. Indeed, even those clergy who traditionally supported the emperor in imperial–papal disputes and who pointed to the corruption and bureaucracy of the curia nevertheless believed that since the papacy was the ultimate spiritual leader of the ‘societas Christiana’, the popes, as successors of St Peter, deserved a home in central Italy. When calling for crusades against political enemies, popes invoked the Theory of the Two Swords – a theory of the relation between spiritual and temporal power which had been propounded by Pope Gelasius I in the fi fth century and expanded upon much more recently in the twelfth by, among others, Bernard of Clairvaux. According to Bernard’s interpretation of the Gelasian decree, the temporal sword was to be wielded for the good of the Church: Both swords, that is, the spiritual and the material, belong to the Church, however, the latter is to be drawn for the Church and the former by the Church. The spiritual sword should be drawn by the hand of the priest; the material sword by the hand of the knight, but clearly at the bidding of the priest and at the command of the emperor.46 Papal supporters claimed that when the pope had crowned Charlemagne in 800 this symbolized that Charlemagne was the new Constantine, anointed to protect and extend the faith under the guidance of St Peter – in other words under papal guidance – and that he and the Carolingian line would protect the Church ever after.47 Hence popes who called for crusades against their political enemies argued that these temporal lords should have used their military might not to invade or destabilize the papal states but to protect the papacy. They should have wielded the temporal sword on behalf of the Church as part of God’s plan that it fl ourish and so bear witness to the truth of Christianity. Popes acted in accordance with this idea when they authorized crusades against their political enemies. Certainly Innocent III called for a crusade against Markward because he believed that he posed a threat to the papal states. In his eyes Markward was worse than a Muslim because his military actions threatened the growth of areas of papal infl uence in central and southern Italy. And Gregory IX and Innocent IV, acting out of fear of Frederick II’s Italian policies, as much as out of a love for power, justifi ed calling for a crusade against him by branding him a heretic. Popes worried, rightly or wrongly, that a strong German emperor must threaten the security of the papal states. The relationship between popes and German emperors had had a long and troubled history. During the late ninth and tenth centuries the papacy had been under the thumb of the great Roman families and its reputation had only eventually been rescued by the Ottonian emperors.48 But in the eleventh century reforming popes had tried to free themselves from the power not only of the Roman aristocracy but also the German empire.49 And in the twelfth, Alexander III had been constantly embroiled in disputes with Frederick I Barbarossa.50 This history of confl ict only added to Innocent III’s mistrust of the German emperors and in particular the Hohenstaufen.
It is easy to be cynical about such papal authorization of crusades to protect the papal states and the popes’ wish to remain a political as well as spiritual force in Christian Europe. But popes knew that if they were to exercise spiritual authority effectively in Europe they would at times need military help to secure their power base, and they saw nothing strange about harnessing that help by calling for a crusade. The power to authorize crusades, like the spiritual powers of interdict, excommunication and anathema, was vital to the papacy. By using these penalties of interdict, excommunication and anathema, popes kept a check on the ambitions of temporal lords when their interests did not favour the papacy or clashed with what they believed was for the good of the Church. Such penalties were taken seriously because the economic, social and political disadvantages which inevitably followed, deprived lords of the allegiance of their vassals and the backing of the clergy. They were also feared because they showed lords to be out of communion not only with the Church but with the papacy itself. However much men might criticise individual popes, papal taxation, or the bureaucracy of the papal chancery, nevertheless Christians in western Europe believed they owed some degree of loyalty to the papacy as their ultimate spiritual guide. Just like these spiritual penalties, crusading was yet another weapon in the papal armoury, since by calling for crusades popes could ensure that temporal lords were harnessed to the papacy’s service. Indeed, the popes were seen to be leading and inspiring the Christian faithful in a tangible and active way. The authority to call for crusades gained them respect in Christian Europe. Although some groups, such as certain troubadours in the south of France, claimed that the Holy Land crusade was being perverted by the use of crusade against heretics and political enemies, others saw it as a sign of the papacy’s strength.51 So much so that when Gregory IX authorized a crusade against Frederick II, the emperor was immensely troubled about the criticism he would receive.52 So, although popes undoubtedly authorized political crusades in order to increase their power in central and southern Italy and for temporal as well as spiritual advantages, this was no mere excuse to increase papal power. Of course different popes acted differently for more or less ‘holy’ or ‘pure’ reasons, but their actions were part of a theory about the role of the papacy in relation to temporal lords in Christian Europe and a belief that the military energies of these lords should be harnessed to support, not damage the Church. If lay rulers failed to support them, popes believed that it was not only the right but the duty of the papacy on behalf of the Christian faith to penalize them, whether this involved interdict, excommunication, anathema or calling for crusades. From the second half of the thirteenth century onwards the ‘political crusade’ would become an increasingly important weapon for popes.53 Indeed, some historians have argued that ‘political crusades’ would then become more important for the papacy than crusading to the Holy Land.
PAPAL CORRESPONDENCE AS EVIDENCE FOR POLICY
Although the papacy was at the height of its temporal and political power in the thirteenth century, there is surprisingly little evidence for the workings of the papal chancery at this period. It seems, however, that during Innocent III’s pontifi cate a number of important reforms were made to improve the smooth running of the chancery.54 Papal letters were composed at the chancery which was presided over by the chancellor or vice-chancellor.55 Different types of letter were despatched from the curia: letters of protection, indults in response to petitions, replies to enquiries on points of law, mandates and correspondence concerning political and social problems.56 These letters can be divided into two groups. The fi rst were ‘common letters’ issued in response to written petitions submitted to and approved by the curia. The second were ‘curial letters’ concerning matters to which the pope or his administration attached particular weight and which in some cases were issued on the pope’s own initiative.57 How often letters were read out to the pope himself before being dispatched remains a matter of great debate amongst historians.58 Certainly the art of letter-writing (ars dictaminis) was increasingly important for twelfth- and thirteenth-century medieval scribes.59 A scientifi c discipline which had originated in Italy, the ars dictaminis had already infl uenced the papal chancery by around 1100.60 During the twelfth century the chancery had evolved its own style of rhythmical prose, the cursus curiae Romanae. 61 Albert of Morra, later Pope Gregory VIII (1187), is often credited with having put into writing certain rules for the composition of papal letters already being followed by the curia. Yet recent scholarship points to various formal statements of the rules being in circulation long before Albert is supposed to have written them down.62 In the thirteenth century ‘common letters’ had to be framed in accordance with this stilus curiae Romanae. 63 Thomas of Capua, a hugely infl uential writer composing during Honorius III’s pontifi cate and at the beginning of Gregory IX’s, was the author of an Ars dictandi, a manual destined for the use of papal notaries and scribes.64 There were probably two major stages in the composition of those papal letters at the curia which were issued in response to petitions. The fi rst was the drafting of a petition which was then presented to the pope. In other words, the original letter of the petitioner had itself to be redrafted at the curia as a formal petition, although there were exceptions to the rule – for example, a bishop might write to the pope on a point of law and one would not expect such a letter to be then recast as a petition. The second stage was when the actual papal letter was drafted on the basis of this petition and possibly read once more before the pope. The drafting of papal letters (the composition of the texts) was primarily the work of notaries65 – senior offi cials of the curia and confi dential secretaries of the chancery, especially skilled in drawing up acts, in applying the rules of the cursus, in the composition of letters and in the collection of forms.66 Scribes were then responsible for engrossing the letters (copying out the texts) and received a fee from the petitioners for this, although they might also be rewarded for their services with a benefi ce or a canonry.67 Others involved in the production were the correctors, selected from among the scribes, whose duty was to see the correction of engrossments, to examine the language, to check for scribal errors, and if necessary to return the document to the original scribe for further attention. The bullatores’ job was to seal the letter once fi nished and to ensure that the proper tax was exacted for the document – to pay for the cost of the parchment, the lead, the silk and the hemp. 68 It seems that in the thirteenth century it was up to the vice-chancellor to revise the content of papal letters. He could do this either when the petition was drafted to be presented to the pope or when the fair copy of the letter was written. Letters despatched from the curia were therefore the result of careful planning, execution and literary skill on the part of a whole host of professional offi cials. The employment of these notaries, scribes, correctors and bullatores at the curia, the working conditions under which papal letters were composed and the particular political circumstances for which they were written, are all important considerations when assessing popes’ letters as evidence for papal policy. But the employment of the different offi cials means there is little means of judging whether a particular letter was drafted under a pope’s personal supervision, or whether the notaries were left a free hand to write using appropriate language and expressions. Furthermore, to what extent did the original petition become part of the papal letter? Did the pope accept petitions presented to the curia as they stood or did he model these petitions to suit his own policies? It is also diffi cult to assess how long a letter took to arrive at its destination once it had been despatched from Rome. And just as important as when it actually arrived, is when curial offi cials judged, rightly or wrongly, that the letter would reach its recipients. So to what extent and at what point in their creation the popes of the fi rst half of the thirteenth century were personally involved in the production of their correspondence, whether they themselves actually composed the text of their letters or at least parts of them, and, if they did, then how many, remain complex questions of ongoing scholarly debate.69 Yet, although it is not possible to be entirely sure in what proportion pope, vice-chancellor and notaries composed the most important letters, it seems likely that the pope himself dictated some of them. So it is probable that the essence of the letter, even if not every word, came from the pope himself. There is, therefore, defi nite evidence of their own ‘voice’ in many of the papal letters. Indeed, a signifi cant number have a highly personal fl avour.70 Letters of Innocent III show stylistic similarities with the theological works he wrote before becoming pope.71 And Patrick Zutshi has recently pointed to the active involvement of Honorius III and Clement IV (1265–1268) in the composition of certain letters at the curia.72 Indeed, one letter of 1267, which shows evidence of personal composition by Clement IV himself, is concerned with the triennial tenth which he conceded to Louis IX of France for his crusade to the East.73 Particularly elegant letters of Gregory IX and Innocent IV to the emperor Frederick II, justifying and propagating the temporal and spiritual power of the papacy, may also indicate papal involvement in their composition.74 Letters of Innocent IV, one of the greatest medieval canon lawyers, refl ected his own judicial mentality as well as the infl uence of his new vice-chancellor Marino Filomarino di Eboli.75 Popes also probably took advice about the content of their correspondence from the cardinals. Indeed the phrase ‘from the advice of our brothers (‘de fratrum nostrorum consilio’), found in a number of letters, suggests that these letters resulted from decisions made in consultation with the cardinals in Consistory – as in the case of letters concerned with provisions for higher benefi ces or confi rming elections.76 So although a lack of evidence means it is very diffi cult to construct exactly how notaries were employed at the papal chancery, how exactly letters to the Christian faithful were composed, plus the contribution of individual popes to the writing process, nevertheless, the popes’ own views, interests and ambitions can often be discerned in their correspondence. It seems likely that the pope would have been present at some point during the composition of general letters sent to the Christian faithful calling for crusades, even if he was not personally involved in the production of all letters to individual rulers and clergymen. Of course some letters are more informative about the individual policies of popes than others, particularly those less formulaic examples which not merely repeated stock phrases and sentiments but contained new and original material. Different popes favoured different scriptural passages and used different images to express themselves. Although the notaries involved in the production of the letters may also have inserted their own favourite biblical passages and metaphors, they could not have employed them without their master’s consent. Certainly papal letters display great continuity. Similar metaphors were employed by all the popes of the fi rst half of the thirteenth century to describe heresy, for example as a disease. Yet there were subtle differences in the way these were employed. Innocent III elaborated on the standard metaphors, using them much more creatively than his successor, Honorius III. Although highly formalized, we can therefore glean much from their letters not only about the political and religious issues at stake during the period of their pontifi cates but about the ideas and characters of the popes themselves. Indeed, such subtle differences in language enable the historian to build up a much more complete picture of the characters and views of the popes than we get from chronicle and biographical accounts. Letters of Honorius III concerned with the establishment of the Dominican Order to preach and teach against heresy in the south of France illustrate that the papacy and the Dominicans had very similar aims during the fi rst decade of the order’s existence.77 And, as we shall see, Honorius’s letters show him to be much more interested in the crusade against heretics in the south of France than the writings of contemporary chroniclers and biographers would suggest, such writers emphasized almost exclusively, in comparison to their depiction of his predecessor, Innocent III, and his successor, Gregory IX, his reputation as a man of peace: a picture endorsed by evidence that he was a bureaucrat at the papal curia and a meticulous compiler of the Liber censuum Romanae Ecclesiae. 78 Yet although Honorius’s letters show he was cautious and keen to emphasize the importance of crusading to the Holy Land, they also show his commitment – possibly infl uenced by Cardinal Ugolino, later Gregory IX – to the crusade against heresy in the south of France, and that he pursued a much more complex policy there than might at fi rst appear. Honorius’s case reinforces the obvious point that popes were individuals with their own aims and agendas. But the papacy was also an institution and popes were conservative creatures who deliberately sought to maintain that institution and to show continuity with their predecessors – in keeping with their belief that they were part of the great apostolic tradition. And of course the authorization and encouragement of crusading was only one of many concerns of thirteenth-century popes and their advisers and notaries at the curia. Letters concerned with crusades differed greatly in style. Some were extremely formulaic, drawing heavily on a well-established genre of ecclesiastical writing and expressing their message in conventional terms. Others were highly rhetorical, employing metaphors, similes and biblical quotations to express the popes’ belief that the launching of crusades was a moral obligation of the papacy.
THE ELEVENTH- AND TWELFTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND
The papacy’s idea of launching crusades against enemies within Europe in the fi rst half of the thirteenth century was based on much earlier foundations. Long before thirteenth-century popes called for ‘internal’ crusades, the papacy had sanctioned and even authorized wars against those deemed enemies of the Church, promising spiritual benefi ts for those who fought on its behalf. In the eleventh century a number of popes issued letters to the Christian faithful of Europe encouraging them to defend themselves against those believed to be seeking to weaken the authority of the Church. In 1016 Benedict VIII (1012–1204) granted ‘the favour of apostolic blessing and absolution’ (‘apostolicae benedictionis et absolutionis munus’) for all those who worked as ‘the assistants and protectors’ (‘adjutores et defensores’) of the monastery of Cluny.79 Also in the eleventh century, popes began to encourage faithful Christians to take up arms against enemies of the papacy itself. One way of doing this was by granting absolution to soldiers on the eve of battle, usually after confession, thereby saving the penitent sinner from hell. In 1053 Leo IX recruited a band of German soldiers and led an army against Norman counts in southern Italy who threatened to invade papal territories.80 According to several contemporary sources, at the battle of Civitate the Pope not only absolved the soldiers of their sins but regarded those who died protecting the papacy as Christian martyrs.81 And Leo fulminated against his enemies in a letter to the Greek emperor Constantine IX Monomachus (1042–1055). He claimed that the Normans, more impious than pagans, had destroyed churches in southern Italy, and he declared that it was his aim to liberate Christians, whom he likened to Christ’s sheep, from Norman oppression.82 Again, this strongly suggests that Leo regarded the Civitate campaign against the Normans as a holy enterprise. Leo IX’s late-eleventh century successors continued to issue letters concerned with the Church’s enemies. Indeed, some of them seem to have viewed certain military campaigns of which they approved as meritorious activities which would contribute to the salvation of their participants.83 On several occasions Gregory VII (1073–1085) granted spiritual rewards for those who fought against his enemies. Most strikingly, following the Lenten Synod held in March 1080 and just before he excommunicated the emperor Henry IV for a second time, Gregory, invoking Sts Peter and Paul, granted absolution of all their sins (‘. . . absolutionem omnium peccatorum’) to all those who supported Rudolf of Swabia’s claims to the imperial throne. Gregory’s letter clearly stated: But in order that Rudolf, whom the Germans have chosen as their king in loyalty to you, may rule over and defend the German kingdom, I grant, allow and concede in your names, to all who faithfully support him, absolution of all sins, and relying on your assurance, I grant your blessing in this life and in the next.84 Then, according to the Life of Saint Anselm of Lucca composed by Archbishop Bardo of Mainz, in March 1085 Gregory exhorted his supporters to defend the lands of one of his greatest admirers, Countess Mathilda of Tuscany. In return, Bardo claimed that they were promised remission of their sins (‘in remissionem omnium peccatorum’) by the authority of St Anselm and the Pope: Our men were very much encouraged because our lord and bishop, Saint Anselm, sent them his blessing through our humble selves, instructing us especially in his orders, that if any had dealings with the excommunicate, we should fi rst absolve them, and then bless them all together by his authority and that of the pope. We were to tell them for what reason and with what intention they should fi ght, and to lay the danger of the forthcoming battle on them for the remission of all their sins.85
This description suggests that Gregory viewed the defence of the countess’s lands as a positively meritorious activity.86 The phrase ‘for the remission of sins’ (‘in remissionem peccatorum’) was a general phrase which occurred more and more frequently in the eleventh century in many different contexts. It was intended to persuade individuals and groups to do something meritorious which would contribute to their salvation by assuring them that after death their suffering would be reduced and even in some cases cancelled altogether.87 Pope Alexander II (1061–1073) used the phrase in a letter concerned with the Barbastro expedition against Muslims in Spain in 1063 – although some recent historians have argued here that the Pope was addressing not military campaigners but pilgrims.88 Pisans campaigning at Mahdia in 1087 seem also to have been granted ‘the remission of their sins’ by Pope Victor II (c. 1018–1057), in return for fi ghting against Muslims in North Africa.89 Meanwhile, some of Leo IX’s successors were calling for crusades against Muslims in the East. First and perhaps most famously of all, according to the twelfth-century Historia peregrinorum, in 1095 Urban II (1088–1099) granted at the Council of Clermont that all those crusaders who made the journey to the East to win back Jerusalem from the infi del would acquire ‘remission of all their sins’ (‘omnium remissionem peccatorum’).90 Canon 2 of the Council decreed that whoever solely out of devotion and not for honour or to gain money, set out on the journey to Jerusalem, would be granted a reckoning of all his penances (‘iter illud pro omni poenitentia ei reputabitur’).91 Doing penance meant performing works of satisfaction which a priest would recommend to or even impose on the person who had confessed and been absolved of his or her sins. Many recent historians have discussed what Urban II’s grant must have meant in the context of the First Crusade and how it would have been interpreted by his successors who continued to call for aid to the Holy Land. It seems that for the journey to Jerusalem, Urban was not granting an indulgence which would have assumed that God would be repaid the debts of punishment which were owed on account of combatants’ recent sins, for which penance had not yet been performed, as well as any residue left over from earlier but insuffi cient penance.92 Such a spiritual privilege was only developed much later. It was during the pontifi cate of Innocent III that the Church would claim that, acting by virtue of the authority given it by Christ through St Peter, it could grant remission of the temporal punishment owed for sin by drawing on a storehouse of merit which had been earned by the sacrifi ce which Christ had made for mankind on the Cross and also by the prayers and good works of the Virgin Mary and the saints in heaven. Rather, in 1095 Urban II enjoined on Christians a holy war of such intensity as to impose a penance so severe as to be entirely ‘satisfactory’, counterbalancing all previous sin and making good any previous unsatisfactory penance.93 So he was proposing that the First Crusade should be regarded as the most severe and meritorious form of penance imaginable. Indeed by the end of the eleventh century not just popes but also archbishops were beginning to promise defi nite spiritual rewards in return for military action on behalf of the Church. It is possible that as early as 1038 Archbishop Aimo of Bourges granted absolution to combatants who fought to enforce peace in the town.94 A few years before the Council of Clermont of 1095, Archbishop Rainald I of Reims granted absolution for those who helped to keep the peace in his province.95 In two letters of 1094 and 1095, Pope Urban II urged Count Robert of Flanders to help the newly-appointed bishop of Arras in France to regain lost Church possessions after a hotly disputed election ‘for the remission of your sins’ (‘in peccatorum tuorum remissionem’ and ‘pro vestrorum peccatorum remisione’).96 The same Archbishop Rainald I of Reims wrote a letter informing the clergy, nobility and people of Cambrai that since the lawful bishop could not, for the moment, be consecrated, episcopal authority was to be temporarily vested in the bishop of Arras. In this letter he summoned the people of Cambrai to fi ght against those he deemed schismatics and simoniacs for the remission of their sins: This however I urge on you most strongly for the remission of your sins. Bear in mind, my sons, that it is for this reason that you bear the sword. Consider, most dear ones, that this is the path to the celestial Jerusalem.97 Here the same phrase ‘for the remission of their sins’ (‘in remissionem peccatorum vestrorum’) was again used to persuade individuals to participate in a meritorious campaign. Twelfth-century popes also continued their predecessors’ calls on Christians to fi ght on behalf of the Church against enemies of the papacy and to promise spiritual rewards for their endeavours. The Benedictine historian Sigebert of Gembloux (circa 1035–1112), who wrote three treatises on the ongoing struggle between empire and papacy in the twelfth century, recorded a letter of 1103 in which Paschal II (1099–1118) appealed to Count Robert of Flanders to send soldiers against the people of Liège for the remission of their sins (‘in peccatorum remissionem’): We urge this on you and your knights for the remission of your sins and the special friendship of the Apostolic See, so that by these exertions and triumphs, with the Lord’s help, you may arrive at the heavenly Jerusalem.98 In the following year Paschal also urged his supporters in Bavaria and Swabia to take up arms ‘for the remission of their sins’ (‘in remissionem peccatorum’) against supporters of the emperor Henry IV whom he described as heretics. And in an undated letter to the knights of San Gimignano, Paschal wrote that he would absolve them from all sins (‘ab omnibus peccatis absolvat’) in exchange for undertaking military service against the emperor.99 Perhaps encouraged by the papacy’s success at Clermont in 1095 in launching the First Crusade, twelfth-century popes also began in particular to issue the promise of remission of sins for fi ghting on behalf of the Church to those who supported the papacy’s temporal and political claims to territories in central Italy. According to the twelfth-century Norman historian Falco of Benevento, Honorius II (1124–1130) rallied the Normans of Apulia at Capua in 1127 to take up arms against Count Roger I of Sicily, whose armies were threatening the papal territories, by detailing the wrongs done to St Peter. The Pope then: immediately granted them the following reward by divine authority and the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the holy Apostles: that is to say, to those who undertook penance for their sins, and who died in the course of the campaign, he remitted all their sins; to those who survived, and confessed their sins, he remitted half.100 So here, according to Falco, the Pope deliberately made a distinction in the spiritual privilege granted between those who took part in the campaign and those who died while campaigning on behalf of the papacy. Then in 1130, at the beginning of the pontifi cate of Honorius II’s successor, Innocent II (1130–1143), the antipope Anacletus II was elected by a majority of cardinals and took charge of Rome.101 There are two recorded examples of spiritual rewards offered to those who fought against Anacletus.102 In a letter of 1132 the bishop of Sant’ Agata dei Goti brought news of the battle of Nocera to Innocent’s supporters in Rome. The bishop recounted that, when Count Roger II of Sicily attacked the papal army on a Sunday and forced it to fi ght, he himself had absolved the army from their sins (‘nos a peccatis . . . absolvimus’): We indeed . . . spoke publicly and in private with our men . . . imposing on them as penance that they should defend themselves for the honour of St Peter and in protection of the lands of the Roman Church, and that they should fi ght not for their own revenge or for money or booty, but in defence of the Church and of their shared freedom. In this way we absolved them of the sins which they had confessed, by the authority of St Peter, of our lord Pope Innocent and of the entire Church, should they perish in this battle.103 Here, in contrast to the concessions made by Gregory VII in the eleventh century, great care was taken to link the absolution offered to the penitential system of confession – just as Urban II had done. Those who fought in the papal army were only absolved of their sins if they had confessed them fi rst.104 Similarly, decrees of Church councils also began to grant spiritual rewards for military service on behalf of the papacy. In 1135 the Council of Pisa imposed a sentence of anathema on all those who served or traded with Count Roger II, king of Sicily from 1130 to 1154 and an important supporter of Anacletus II, describing him as ‘the tyrant Roger’. The council also specifi cally stated that the same remission of sins was to be granted for those who campaigned against Roger or Anacletus as Pope Urban II had granted for the First Crusade in 1095: to those who set out against him or Pierleone [the antipope Anacletus II] by land or sea to free the Church, and labour faithfully in that service, the same remission was granted, which Pope Urban decreed at the council of Clermont for all who set out to Jerusalem to free the Christians.105 It is not known whether the council intended that people who sought the indulgence should formally make a votive obligation and take the Cross, as did those who in the twelfth century were embarking on crusades to the Holy Land or Spain.106 What is clear, however, is that it was issuing ‘crusading’-type indulgences, such as had been granted for those who set out on the Jerusalem journey (‘iter’) in 1095, for those who waged war against the enemies of Innocent II. This idea of directing Christian armies against enemies within Christendom itself, rather than against ‘external’ Muslim foes, was particularly clearly expressed in a letter of Peter the Venerable (circa 1092–1156), abbot of the monastery of Cluny, a close friend of the papal curia and a noted twelfth-century theologian. Writing to Everard of Barres, master of the military order of the Templars, Peter stated: An essential aspect of your offi ce as a knight, and the reason why you took up arms, is that you should protect the Church of God from its assailants . . . But perhaps you will say: we took up arms against the pagans, not against Christians. Well, who deserves to be attacked more by you or your people, the pagan who does not know God, or the Christian who acknowledges God with his words but fi ghts against Him with his deeds?107 This was the most detailed justifi cation thus far for directing Christian military force against other Christians rather than against ‘external’ pagans and Muslims.108 Another of Peter’s letters, to Pope Eugenius III (1145–1153), echoed Leo IX’s calls for military action against the Normans in Italy. Peter went so far as to describe as ‘false Christians, worse than the Muslims’ those who attacked the monastery of Cluny.109 Later in the twelfth century Alexander III (1159–1181) gave political backing to the newly formed Lombard League against the German emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1152–1190). In his general letter ‘Non est dubium’ of 1170 Alexander threatened the spiritual penalties of excommunication and interdict against those who failed to co-operate in defending papal lands. Yet, despite his long confl ict with Frederick I between 1160 and 1170, he never issued any type of indulgence in return for fi ghting against the emperor.110 This contrasted greatly with the behaviour of the thirteenth-century popes Gregory IX and Innocent IV who, as will be discussed in Chapter 4, granted the plenary indulgence for a crusade against Frederick II. Alexander may indeed have been uneasy at the idea of granting indulgences for fi ghting holy wars. In general, twelfth-century popes seemed willing to use spiritual incentives in their struggles against perceived enemies only at times of acute military need, usually when there was a confl ict in southern Italy threatening the security of the papal states themselves, as had happened earlier in 1053 and 1127–28.111 During the pontifi cate of Alexander III a royal synod was held in 1164 at Trondheim, an archbishopric since 1153 and seat of King Magnus V of Norway (1156–1184). This synod ordered the country’s clergy to publicize that anyone who died fi ghting ‘in defence of the peace and the protection of the “patria”’ against Swedish pagans would be rewarded with the kingdom of heaven (‘regna celestia consequentur’).112 The Synod of Segovia, a council of the Church in Castile in 1166, again during Alexander III’s pontifi cate, offered an even greater incentive for military action. Canon 2 stated that it remitted ‘as much of his enjoined penance as he would gain from going to Jerusalem’ for anyone who fought for the king of Castile against his Muslim enemies when required.113 It is unclear, however, exactly what this meant. Some historians have argued that the canon referred to the traditional indulgence the papacy granted to those going to Jerusalem on pilgrimage rather than to a crusade indulgence in aid of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. But even if this was the case and the indulgence was therefore granted for the Jerusalem pilgrimage rather for a crusade, it was still a signifi cant remission. Various twelfth-century archbishops and bishops also continued to authorize campaigns and promise spiritual rewards in return for military service. According to the twelfth-century Benedictine Guibert of Nogent, abbot of the abbey of Nogent-sous-Coucy, a campaign was launched in 1115 on behalf of the Church against the notorious magnate and powerful castellan Thomas of Marle. The archbishop of Reims and the bishops of the archdiocese absolved men from their sins and ordered them to attack Thomas’s own castle of Crécy, assuring them that this would insure the salvation of their souls. Not long after, the bishop of Amiens gave assurance of eternal life to those who died besieging the castle at Amiens (belonging to Thomas’s father at this point) which was being held by one of Thomas’s associates.114 Then in 1148 the archbishop of Trier is recorded as rallying his troops to the cause of the liberty of the Church. He was described as administering a general confession, and granting them ‘an indulgence and remission of all your offences’ (‘indulgentiam et remissionem omnium delictorum vestrorum’) in the hope that those who died in the campaign would gain eternal life.115 Furthermore, in 1139 the archbishop of Auch published an edict relating to the last phase of the Peace and Truce of God Movement in France, a movement designed by the Church in the tenth and eleventh centuries to limit the damage of war arising from feuds in Christian society. This edict was similar to that of Canon 12 of the Second Lateran Council, also of 1139, which established rules governing the Truce of God and called for bishops to do all in their power to establish peace throughout Christian Europe. The edict of the archbishop of Auch seems to have granted a plenary indulgence (‘omnium peccatorum suorum indulgentiam’) for fi ghting against ‘routiers’: The prince, however, and all the faithful obedient to our orders, who contribute to the cause of peace by work or counsel, and who faithfully fi ght against the breakers of peace, and in particular against the pestilential bands of mercenaries, are not to doubt that, if they die in true penitence in this, the service of God, they will enjoy an indulgence of all their sins, and the fruit of an eternal reward, by the authority of God, of the lord pope, and of the universal Church. To others indeed, who take up arms against them and fi ght for their expulsion according to the advice of bishops or other prelates, we remit two years of enjoined penance; and if they remain there for a longer period, we commit to the discretion of the bishops, who are entrusted with the supervising of the matter, the granting of a larger indulgence according to their judgement.
This decree of the archbishop of Auch was very similar to that issued by the archbishop of Reims shortly before the First Crusade of 1095. It had also been reiterated by clerical supporters of King Louis VI of France (1108–1137) who, as noted above, had fought against Thomas of Marle and at Amiens in 1115.117 Signifi cantly, the provisions relating to the grant of indulgences in this decree of the archbishop of Auch of 1139 were very similar to those of Canon 27 of the Third Lateran Council of 1179, called by Alexander III. Canon 27 pronounced a sentence of anathema on heretics and their protectors in ‘Gascony, the Albigeois and the region of Toulouse and other places’ and denied them Christian burial. It prescribed the same penalties for employers of ‘routiers’ and summoned the faithful to defend Christians ‘for the remission of their sins’ (‘in remissionem peccatorum injungemus’). It also promised an indulgence for sins and the fruit of eternal reward (‘peccatorum indulgentiam et fructum mercedis aeternae’) to those who died in action in the south of France and guaranteed the same Church protection as that enjoyed by pilgrims to Jerusalem: ‘Indeed we receive under the Church’s protection those, who, with the ardour of faith, shall have taken up that labour in order to fi ght . . . just as those who visit the tomb of the Lord.’118 It is possible that Canon 27 of Lateran III was deliberately echoing the Auch decree of 1139. Yet despite the call for military action, at this point there was no suggestion of a crusade being authorized against heretics in the south of France. There was no mention of votive obligations, nor any apparatus in place for taking the Cross. It has even been suggested that Alexander III was not considering military action against the Cathar heretics at all, but rather that the coercive aspects of the canon referred only to ‘routiers’ and their employers.119 This seems unlikely, however, since the Pope had already backed an Anglo-French preaching tour against the Cathars in 1177–8 led by his legate Peter of San Crisogono and Henry of Marcy, abbot of Cîteaux.120 Furthermore, the Pope also supported a campaign in 1181 against Cathars, led by the same Henry of Marcy, now cardinal bishop of Albano. Indeed it is possible that Henry himself pressed for the formulation of Canon 27.121 While during the twelfth century certain popes continued to use such spiritual rewards to encourage Christians to take part in military campaigns against those whom they considered enemies of the Church, collections of legal texts and commentaries were multiplying across Europe. These texts and commentaries included material concerned with the authorization of military campaigns against heretics and political opponents of the papacy and were extremely important to popes, some of whom had themselves been trained in canon law. The twelfth-century Concordia discordantium canonum, popularly known as Gratian’s Decretum, compiled around 1140, probably at Bologna, during the pontifi cate of Innocent II, was a massive collection of texts concerned with Church discipline. It contained important texts from the Church fathers and other authorities dealing with the justifi cation of violence in a good cause and the status of heretics, and also Muslims and Jews, in Christian society. The selection of texts itself depended heavily on the works of earlier canonists. Although the collection and commentary, as opposed to the texts it contained, had no formal standing in the Church, the Decretum was highly infl uential in moulding the attitudes of canon lawyers, senior churchmen and popes themselves. The fi rst and shorter half of the work was grouped into ‘Distinctiones’ (distinctions), the second and longer into ‘Causae’ (cases). These ‘Causae’ were then divided into ‘Quaestiones’ (questions) and in response to these ‘Quaestiones’, excerpts known as ‘capitula’ cited authoritative texts – canons of Church councils, opinions of early Church fathers and papal pronouncements – and provided an intellectual framework within which their apparent contradictions could be resolved.122 Gratian’s Decretum was an immensely important text for both contemporary and later canonists.123 These included infl uential and widely read twelfth- and thirteenth-century fi gures such as Rufi nus, Stephen of Tournai, Bernard of Pavia, Huguccio, Johannes Teutonicus and Hostiensis.124 In the twelfth century, for example, Huguccio (d 1210) wrote a commentary, the Summa super corpore decretorum, on the Decretum while another canonist, Bernard Balbi of Pavia (d 1213), composed glosses to it.125 Works such as the Glossa Palatina of Laurentius Hispanus and the anonymous twelfth-century texts composed in Paris and Cologne, the Summa Parisiensis and the Summa ‘Elegantius in iure divino’ seu Coloniensis, also gave thorough analyses of the Decretum. 126 In the thirteenth century the Bolognese canonists Johannes Teutonicus (1170–1245) and Bartholomew of Brescia (d 1258) produced their Glossa ordinaria on the Decretum: Johnannes probably compiled his between 1215 and 1217, shortly after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, and it was subsequently re-edited and enlarged circa 1245 by Bartholomew.127 This revised and enlarged version became the standard exposition of the Decretum in the universities and possessed a special authority for later expositors and commentators. Furthermore, the Decretum was important not only for canon lawyers but also for twelfth- and thirteenth-century theologians who provided the intellectual and technical background for papal thought.128 In particular, canon lawyers and theologians drew on Causa 23 and Causa 24 of the Decretum because these cases comprised a systematic and easily accessible treatment of relevant theological texts, many from the Church fathers.129 Nevertheless, it is perhaps surprising that, although Gratian’s Decretum was compiled almost fi fty years after the launch of the First Crusade in 1095, no section of the work was devoted specifi cally to crusading. Although Causa 17 was concerned with the canonical status and implication of vows, there was no mention of the crusade vow in particular. One important reason for this was that most of the texts cited in the Decretum were pre-twelfth century and that much of Gratian’s thinking was shaped by the earlier works of Anselm of Lucca and Ivo of Chartres, who were writing just before the First Crusade.130 Indeed although the adjective ‘crucesignati’ occurred in letters of popes recorded in the late twelfth- and thirteenth-century decretal collections known as the Quinque antiquae compilationes and Liber extra decretalium, even in these later works there were no special sections concerned with the crusades. There was no use of a Latin noun to designate a crusade, and legal questions relating to crusades were covered under ‘Titula’ (titles) on warfare and vows. Why this was the case is an extremely complex issue. It may suggest that even at this point in the late twelfth and thirteenth century the Church had no ‘offi cial’ vocabulary to describe crusading.131 But it may be also due to the huge infl uence of the canonist Bernard Balbi of Pavia’s Compilatio prima, composed between 1187 and 1191, a collection of papal decretals which was designed in fi ve books, each of which in turn was subdivided into titles. This became the model for all later major decretal collections, which were then also always organized in fi ve books and given the same ‘Titula’.132 It could explain why we do not fi nd specifi c crusading titles in the Quinque antiquae compilationes and the Liber extra decretalium, and why some of the decretals contained in these works concerning crusading were collected under different titles. Yet the lack of specifi c treatment of crusades did not stop Gratian’s Decretum becoming an important text for the later development of the idea of crusading. It did discuss the idea of just violence and just wars – and that in great detail – elaborating on earlier canonical traditions which stemmed back to the early Church.133 Indeed later thirteenth-century crusade preachers, who regarded crusades as one type of just war, frequently cited the Decretum in their crusade sermons. Causa 23 was particular pertinent to popes’ authorization of military campaigns against those perceived as enemies of the Church because it was concerned with whether violence could ever be considered just. This causa used as an example the case of a set of heretical bishops who began to force Catholics in their dioceses to espouse their beliefs with threats and torture.134 The Pope then ordered neighbouring bishops to defend the people from their heretical bishops and gave directions on how to force the latter to return to the faith. Next, the Catholic bishops sent soldiers to round up the heretics: a few were executed, some stripped of their possessions or ecclesiastical appointments and others imprisoned until under duress they returned to orthodox Christianity. The quaestiones or questions which followed this example provided the basic justifi cation for the act of force. Quaestio 1 began by asking whether it was a sin to wage war. Quaestio 2 asked what type of war might be considered just, and how just wars had been waged in the Old Testament. Quaestio 3 asked whether it was right that injuries be avenged by force, Quaestio 4 whether waging war was legal. Quaestio 5 discussed whether it was a sin for a judge or minister to kill the guilty, Quaestio 6 whether evil men should be forced into good behaviour. Quaestio 7 asked whether heretics should be stripped of their possessions (including ecclesiastical goods), who might take possession of their property and indeed who rightfully could own another’s goods. Quaestio 8 discussed whether bishops or clerics, either on their own authority or under papal or imperial command, could bear arms. The complexity of the example and the number of these quaestiones highlighted the intricate problems connected with authorizing violence for the sake of what the Church considered a just cause. Many of the answers to the questions posed in the different excerpts – known as capitula – derived from the writings of the early Church fathers, and in particular from the letters of St Augustine of Hippo (354–430). Causa 23 quoted a large number of Augustinian texts to demonstrate that war was not intrinsically sinful and that some wars were more just and moral than others. Although St Augustine emphasized the need for spiritual struggle against enemies,135 he also argued that it was not wrong to perform military service and that it was not sinful to kill if the war was waged with God’s authority.136 Capitulum 6 of Quaestio 1, an excerpt from a letter of St Augustine, declared: Among the true worshippers of God even wars themselves are ended peacefully, which are waged not out of greed or cruelty, but with a strong desire for peace, in order that evil men should be coerced and good men supported.137 Therefore wars which were waged to coerce the evil and alleviate the suffering of the good should be considered just. Indeed Capitulum 1 of Quaestio 2 of Causa 23 quoted St Isidore of Seville (560–636) who had also argued in favour of just wars:138 That war is just which is waged as a result of an edict concerning the recovery of possessions or warding off men . . .139 So, according to Isidore, a just war was a defensive operation, an argument which twelfth- and thirteenth-century popes emphasized when authorizing crusades, whether to the East or within Christian Europe. Similarly infl uential was Capitulum 41 of Quaestio 4 of Causa 23, a letter of St Augustine discussing whether the Church might seek the help of temporal powers against its enemies.140 Thus the idea of calling on secular powers to wage wars against the enemies of the Church, central to papal authorization of crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, had, the popes believed, the sanction of Augustine. Indeed some of the texts cited in Causa 23 suggested that certain just wars could be positively meritorious, contributing to the salvation of their participants. Of particular importance were papal letters sanctioning wars for the defence of Rome and the papal territories against invaders. Capitulum 17 of Quaestio 8 of Causa 23 quoted a sixth-century letter of Gregory I the Great (590–604) encouraging a certain Roman general to prepare troops to defend Rome against the Lombards.141 Capitulum 7 of Quaestio 8 was a letter of Pope Leo IV (847–855) which ordered Christians to join forces for the defence of Italian ports against Saracen invaders advancing on Rome.142 In Capitulum 9 of Quaestio 8, Leo IV declared that God would reward with the Eternal Kingdom those who died in the defence of Christians.143 And Capitulum 46 of Quaestio 5 of Causa 23 quoted a letter of Nicholas I (858–67) assuring the army of the Franks that those who died in armed struggle against infi del Saracens would gain eternal reward.144 So Causa 23’s concern with just violence meant it was particularly pertinent to popes’ authorization of crusades against ‘internal’ enemies. It was also important in the development of the idea of ‘internal’ crusades because it contained texts about the status and treatment of heretics in Christian society. Quaestio 3 contained letters of St Augustine concerning the fi fth-century Donatist heresy. Capitulum 3 declared that Catholics could legitimately ask lawful secular authorities for defence against heretics. And using imagery from the New Testament, Capitulum 4 declared that there was a great difference between the persecution of Donatist heretics and the persecution of Catholics. Whereas Catholics were followers of Christ, Donatists were like the followers of the High Priest whose servant’s ear had been cut off by St Peter:145 indeed, those who fought against heretics were like St Peter who, according to the Gospel, had drawn his sword to defend Christ.146 Certain capitula of Quaestio 4, again excerpts from letters of St Augustine, similarly referred to the Donatists. Capitulum 38 affi rmed that heretics unwilling to renounce their heresy were if necessary to be saved from error by force.147 Capitulum 39 argued that heretics rightly suffered whatever punishments Catholics infl icted upon them for their spiritual benefi t,148 and Capitulum 40 that it was reasonable for the Church to pursue heretics.149 Capitula 43 and 44 of Quaestio 5 stated that schismatics and heretics separated from the unity of the Church should be coerced by the secular authorities.150 Capitulum 47 of Quaestio 5 quoted a letter of Urban II (1088–1099), stating that those who, burning with the zeal of Mother Church, killed excommunicates were not to be punished as murderers, but that a suitable penance should be imposed on them which refl ected their intentions.151 Quaestio 7 contained letters of St Augustine concerned with the insult (‘contumelia’) which the Church suffered from the Donatists.152 Capitulum 1 argued that earthly possessions were held either by divine or human law,153 and led on to a statement in Capitulum 2 that Catholics might own possessions belonging to heretics.154 Capitulum 3 argued that heretics who retained churches did so unjustly, since imperial decree ordered that they be handed back to Catholics. And Capitulum 4 stated that anyone who departed from the Church, Christ’s body, could not retain the ‘spirit of justice’ (‘spiritum iusticiae’).155 Causa 24 of the Decretum was also important for building a case for papal authorization of ‘internal’ crusades, because it dealt exclusively with those texts of the Church fathers concerned with jurisdiction over heretics.156 The example used was that of a bishop who had deprived priests of their offi ce and declared them excommunicated.157 After his death the prelate was accused of heresy and he, his followers and family were offi cially condemned. Quaestio 1 asked whether a heretic could indeed deprive others of offi ce or pronounce them excommunicated; Quaestio 2 whether someone could be excommunicated after death; Quaestio 3 whether a man’s family should be excommunicated on account of his transgressions. The Dictum ante c.1 of Quaestio 1 declared: But that someone cannot be deposed or excommunicated by a heretic is easily shown. For every heretic either follows an already condemned heresy or fashions a new one. But the man who follows an already condemned heresy makes himself part of its condemnation.158 Forty-two capitula followed quoting a range of texts from St Augustine, from other fathers of the Church and from pronouncements of popes themselves, dealing with different aspects of heresy. Quaestio 1 presented texts which emphasized that whereas Catholics might associate with infi dels, they should shun heretics to avoid corruption. Indeed, according to St Ambrose (339–97) Catholics should avoid all contact with heretics.159 St Augustine stated that, even if the heretics excommunicated one of their own for a grave crime, he should not be accepted by Catholics; Catholics should never receive anyone excommunicated by heretics, even if there seemed suffi cient reason.160 While Pope Sixtus II (432–40) stressed that the faith of the Roman Church destroyed every heresy and favoured none.161 Quaestio 2 contained six capitula, texts on the Church’s spiritual powers over the living and the dead and in particular the spiritual power of excommunication. The Dictum ante c.1 of Quaestio 2 stated: . . . that indeed after his death no-one is able to be excommunicated or absolved is shown from the words of the Gospel which say ‘Whatever you shall bind on earth etc.’ He [Christ] said on the earth, not under the earth, showing that we can bind or loose the living for a variety of their merits; but concerning the dead we cannot bring a sentence.162 By contrast, according to Capitulum 6 of Quaestio 2, a decree of the Second Council of Constantinople called by the emperor Justinian (483–565) in 553, heretics should be excommunicated even after their death.163 Quaestio 3 comprised 40 capitula detailing the circumstances under which the sentence of excommunication should be applied. The fi rst sentence of the Dictum ante c.1 declared: ‘That for the sins of some individual the whole family must be excommunicated is demonstrated by the examples of many’.164 Capitulum 39 of this quaestio was a long passage from the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville describing the various heresies which had arisen in the Church since its founding.165 Simony (the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offi ce), Arianism and Donatism were among the 68 named heresies, as well as Manicheism: The Manichees derived from a certain Persian, who was called Mani. This man introduced two natures and two substances, that is a good and a bad, and he asserted that souls proceed from God as if from some sort of fountain. They [the Manichees] reject the Old Testament, they accept the New in parts.166 This account accorded with later descriptions by chroniclers of absolute dualism, an extreme form of Catharism, which held that there were two gods who had created the world, a good god who was in charge of all things spiritual and an evil god who was in charge of all things material. This absolute dualism seems to have replaced mitigated dualism (a form of Catharism with more recognizable links to Christianity) in the south of France after the Cathar council of St Felix- deCaraman of 1167/1172. It was against this heresy that Innocent III, Honorius III and Gregory IX called for crusades in the fi rst half of the thirteenth century.167 Certain capitula of Quaestio 3, in particular texts of St Jerome (347–419) and St Augustine, defi ned the nature of heresy itself. Capitulum 27 quoted St Jerome: ‘Heresy’ in Greek is connected with choice, evidently because each man chooses that discipline for himself which he thinks is better. Therefore the man who understands Scripture otherwise than in the sense inspired by the Holy Spirit, by whom it was written, although he has not left the Church, nevertheless can be called a heretic and he is from fl eshly works, choosing those things which are worse.168 And Capitulum 28, St Augustine stated: He is a heretic who, for the sake of some temporal advantage and especially for his own glory and power either produces or follows false and new beliefs. But the man who believes such men is fooled by a certain impression of truth.169 Capitulum 26 quoted St Jerome’s distinction between schism and heresy: I judge this to be the difference between heresy and schism, that heresy is the holding of a perverse dogma, while schism, after episcopal withdrawal, equally separates one from the Church. Indeed in its origin it [schism] may be understood as different in some respects; but there is no schism which does not fashion some type of heresy for itself, in that it seems right to have departed from the Church.170 In these texts the Church fathers defi ned heresy as the holding of false beliefs. By contrast, they defi ned schism as merely separation from the Church, although this would inevitably lead to heresy. Such interest in the distinction between schism and heresy would continue to be a subject of much discussion for twelfth- and thirteenth-century canonists. Commenting on the Decretum, one twelfth-century Summa, the ‘Elegantius in iure divino’ seu Coloniensis, the work of a French or German canonist writing in Cologne circa 1169, stated that there was no schism unless someone, having initiated a heresy, left the Church:171 Let what is said of the schismatic be said of the heretic. Moreover, he is a heretic, who departs from the truth of the Faith, but a schismatic is one who departs from Catholic unity and peace. Since, however, separation from Mother Church can neither be brought about without division nor division without separation, not undeservingly every schismatic is called a heretic.172 The thirteenth-century Spanish canonist Laurentius Hispanus (d 1248), commenting on the same passage of the Decretum, developed the argument further: C.24.q.3.c.26: Know that it is rightly called schism when someone who was in the Church departs from that part . . . because he misunderstands some article of faith . . . again note, that every schismatic is a heretic, but the converse is not the case . . .173 Another canonist, Bernard Balbi of Pavia (d 1213), also commenting on the same passage, argued that schism led to heresy: But schism . . . is different from heresy, undoubtedly in its beginning; but when it has grown, it begins to call its congregation the Church, and thus it is seen to fall into heresy and to sin in that article of faith, namely: I believe in the holy Catholic Church, see Causa 23 q.3. ‘about heresy’ (c.26).174 Here, then, were excellent examples of twelfth- and thirteenth-century canonists discussing and interpreting the Decretum in order to develop their own defi nitions of heresy and schism. As we have seen, texts quoted in the Decretum emphasized the need to fi ght in order to defend the Church from its enemies – a constant theme of thirteenth-century popes in their letters calling for ‘internal’ crusades.175 The belief that all enemies of the papacy were heretics accorded with traditional Church teaching. In the eleventh century, Pope Nicholas II (1058–1061) had declared that anyone who tried to seize the prerogative of the Roman Church (‘Romanae ecclesiae privilegium’), conferred by Christ, fell into heresy because his action injured Christ himself.176 And according to the eleventh-century theologian Peter Damian, a heretic was anyone who set aside the idea of papal privileges and did not show obedience or seek the advice of the apostolic see.
The popes of the fi rst half of the thirteenth century were heavily infl uenced by such statements. Indeed, subsequent chapters will show that there was a marked similarity between this language found in patristic texts and in the writings of revered popes which were recorded in the Decretum, and that used by thirteenth-century popes in their letters authorizing and encouraging crusades. The different texts cited in Causa 23 described the enemies of the Church as ‘infi deles’, ‘impii’, ‘iniqui’, ‘perditi’ and ‘perfi di’, all words later commonly used by popes in their letters authorizing ‘internal’ crusades.178 St Ambrose often referred to those who carried not physical but spiritual weapons as ‘Christi milites’ (‘soldiers of Christ’), a phrase which ironically was repeatedly used by these popes in their correspondence about those who did indeed take up physical weapons against heretics and political enemies of the papacy.179 Just as St Augustine emphasized the boldness of the Donatists, so Innocent III and his successors continued this theme in relation to Cathar heretics who, like the Donatists, were depicted as dualist Manichees.180 And the phrase ‘peccatis exigentibus’ – ‘as our (or ‘their’ – depending on context) sins require’ – which occurred in the Dictum ante c.1 of Quaestio 3 of Causa 24 and was common long before the composition of the Decretum, was used frequently in papal correspondence to describe mankind’s tendency to sin.181 Certain colourful metaphors and similes which occurred in excerpts of the Decretum, such as St Augustine’s use of the biblical image of Christians as Christ’s sheep or fl ock (‘oves Christi’ and ‘greges Domini’),182 reference made by St Augustine and Urban II to the Church as a mother (‘mater Ecclesia’ and ‘Catholica mater’),183 and St Augustine’s description of the celestial Jerusalem as a mother (‘mater vestra celestis Ierusalem’),184 were also employed by popes in their letters concerned with ‘internal’ crusades. In particular, metaphors and similes about medicine and disease were prominent in the Decretum. Capitulum 25 of Quaestio 4 of Causa 23, an excerpt from St Augustine, argued that evil men should be forced into goodness by medicinal severity.185 Capitulum 31 of Quaestio 23 of Causa 24, another excerpt from Augustine, likened heretics to those diseased: Those in Christ’s Church who hold some sick or corrupt opinion, if having been corrected . . . they resist stubbornly, and do not want to emend their pestiferous and death-bringing beliefs, but persist in defending them, then they are heretics.186 As we shall see in subsequent chapters, such metaphors and similes comparing heresy to a disease also occurred frequently in thirteenth-century papal correspondence concerned with ‘internal’ crusades, and perhaps most strikingly in the letters of Innocent III.
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