Crusades · 1212
What had a crusade come to mean by 1220?
The seminar question: “By 1220, crusades were being called against Muslims in Spain, pagans in the Baltic and heretics in France. What did “crusade” mean?”
Once a crusade meant any holy war carrying an indulgence, popes aimed it far from the Levant. In Iberia the victory at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 broke Almohad power; in the Baltic the Teutonic Knights conquered and forcibly converted pagan peoples; and the Albigensian Crusade killed thousands at Béziers in 1209.
Chapter 9 is included with every paid plan. WW2 is free in full, and chapter 1 of every atlas is free. A free account opens 3 more chapters a day. Starter, at $9 a month, opens all 21 with no daily limit — see the plans.
The wars of Iberia, the Baltic and southern France had different enemies and purposes. What made them crusades was an arrangement the Church could carry from one campaign to another. A participant took a vow; preaching recruited fighters, Church-authorized fundraising supported them, and an indulgence and legal privileges rewarded their service. The destination no longer had to be Jerusalem.
The short answer
- The indulgence, generalized. The indulgence Urban offered for the Jerusalem expedition became available for other campaigns. Popes extended crusading rewards to wars against Muslims in Spain, pagans in the Baltic, heretics in France and, later, their own political enemies in Italy. The reward could follow the authorization rather than a single destination.
- Frontier ambition, sanctified. The rulers on these frontiers already had ambitions: Iberian kings sought the land and cities of al-Andalus, while Baltic lords wanted territory and converts. Crusade authorization blessed their campaigns and brought in men and money from farther away. It strengthened existing projects rather than creating them.
- Heresy treated as mortal threat. Church leaders regarded Cathar dissent as a grave spiritual threat. Their decision to authorize war against it brought crusading against fellow Christians in southern France. The institution had traveled far from the summons to aid the eastern churches.
THE TURNING POINT
Las Navas de Tolosa, 16 July 1212. At Las Navas de Tolosa on 16 July 1212, a coalition of Christian kings defeated the Almohads and badly weakened their power in Iberia. Within four decades Córdoba and Seville had fallen, leaving Granada a tributary emirate. The western campaigns were gaining territory that would last while the eastern project faced severe difficulties after the diversion to Constantinople.
What it changed
Iberia reconquered. The advance continued with Córdoba’s fall in 1236 and that of Seville in 1248, shown by the arrow. Granada survived as a tributary emirate until 1492. The Christian kingdoms could settle land behind a connected frontier; the rulers of Outremer could not rely on the same conditions.
A German Baltic. Crusading and settlement established the Teutonic order’s power in Prussia and Livonia. Its state shaped northern Europe for centuries, leaving borders and grievances that echoed into the modern age.
Crusade turned inward. Béziers showed that crusading could be directed against Christians. The Albigensian campaign also formed part of the wider setting in which the Inquisition developed, adding to the Church’s means of suppressing heresy.
The full answer, argued
By 1220, a crusade was defined less by a journey to the Holy Land than by the authorization and privileges attached to a campaign. The papacy could offer vows, indulgences, legal protection and organized fundraising against enemies it identified as threats to Christendom. That made it possible to mobilize people and resources on several fronts. It also gave religious sanction to conquest in Iberia and the Baltic and to repression in Languedoc. The people involved did not all want the same thing: rulers seeking territory, settlers and those answering preachers could have different motives. Nor did all the wars have the same prospects. Iberian and Baltic campaigns could use land routes and nearby settlement; Outremer depended on a narrow coast supplied across the sea. The institution’s flexibility gave the papacy a powerful means of supporting war and widened the purposes for which holy war could be claimed.
An interesting fact
After Las Navas, Alfonso VIII sent Innocent III both a victory letter and the captured standard of the caliph al-Nasir. The standard was hung in St Peter’s; al-Nasir fled to Marrakesh and died within eighteen months. The letter claimed that only twenty-five or thirty Christians in the entire army had fallen. Historians reject that figure. Alfonso needed the pope’s continued support, and his report was an act of persuasion as well as an account of victory. Innocent had ordered processions in Rome that spring to pray for the campaign.
This is the study layer of Crusades beyond the Holy Land, chapter 9 of The Crusades, 1095–1291; the full index of the atlas is here.
Related questions
THE FREE PRINTABLE STUDY GUIDE
Get the printable study guide for The Crusades free. I’ll send you a few short letters, then one when a new atlas opens. That’s all. — Paul
NO TRACKING · YOUR ADDRESS IS USED FOR THE DISPATCH AND NOTHING ELSE · UNSUBSCRIBE ANYTIME