Papal and Secular Protection of the Families and Properties the Crusaders Left Behind, C.1095-1226
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1 ‘Under Our Protection, That of the Church and Their Own’- Papal and Secular Protection of the Families and Properties the Crusaders Left Behind, c.1095-1226. Danielle Park Royal Holloway College, University of London PhD 2 Declaration of Authorship I, Danielle Park, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others this is always clearly stated. Signed:___________ Dated:____________ 3 Throughout this project I have received assistance and encouragement from many people and it is a great pleasure to express my appreciation for them here. I thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council (www.ahrc.ac.uk) for providing me with a three-year Doctoral Award. I am especially indebted to Jonathan Phillips for first introducing me to the Crusades and for his invaluable insight, guidance and support as my supervisor. I offer my sincere thanks to Jonathan Harris and Peregrine Horden for reading the thesis in full and providing constructive advice and encouragement throughout the project. I am particularly obliged to Hannes Kleineke, Marian Ciuca and Martin Hall for their advice on translating various Latin texts. I am fortunate to have received help from numerous scholars at various stages of the project, I am especially grateful for the generosity of Thomas Asbridge, Barbara Bombi, Marcus Bull, Lindy Grant, Bernard Hamilton, Alan V. Murray, Thomas Madden, William Purkis and Jochen Schenk. Likewise I am pleased to express my thanks to both the History tutors and my PhD peers at Royal Holloway. It is a pleasure to acknowledge my students on HS2009 and HS2010 for their enthusiasm and for teaching me so much about style, clarity and brevity, and equally to thank the MA students on HS5209A for showing such interest in my subject and for discussing many of the ideas and themes that appear in my thesis. The libraries at Reading University, Oxford, and London were especially welcoming and helpful throughout the project but particular thanks are due to Luisa Hodgkinson and the Inter Library Loan department at Royal Holloway for tracking down the more obscure texts. Marie- Christine Ockenden and the administrative team at Royal Holloway have consistently gone above and beyond to ensure that the PhD progressed smoothly and I am pleased to thank them for their help here. My family, and most especially my parents and sister, have been an unfailing source of moral support from the thesis’ earliest origins to its final stages, and they were particularly understanding when events of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took precedence over the present day. My greatest debt is to my parents, it is no exaggeration to say that this thesis could not have been completed without their constant enthusiasm, reassurance and assistance. 4 Abstract ‘Ill-defined and incomprehensible to contemporaries’: these are two of the charges scholarship has levelled at the papal protection privilege for crusaders. Major innovations in this field have been attributed to Innocent III (1198-1216), yet many of these ideas can be identified as having developed much earlier. This thesis will demonstrate the profound originality of the protection initiated by Urban II in 1095, and discuss the role of the protection in recruitment as an added attraction or, at least, as a way for the pope to negate obstacles to taking the cross. Under Eugenius III (1145-53) this privilege took on a new formula that dominated papal missives beyond Innocent III’s pontificate. In essence, crusaders were differentiated from pilgrims, and that protection sharply delineated crusaders’ wives, families and possessions from those of the men-at-arms who did not take the cross. During the Second Crusade (1145-49), the metaphor of the two swords of government took on a new centrality within the crusading context. This connection between secular and spiritual authority has not received adequate attention from scholars. Protected status is the starting point of the discussion of papal and secular guardianship over the crusaders’ lands and possessions. Crusaders and those remaining in the West were well aware of their status from the outset. This secular experience is determined through detailed discussion of the charters issued by crusade regents. The crusades have been interpreted as ‘windows of opportunity’ for wives otherwise excluded from politics, however demonstrably the women chosen for these roles were, in fact, already experienced in government. This thesis also compares and contrasts the effectiveness of papal and secular measures in protecting the crusader’s interests, and assesses the political impact of the crusaders’ departure on those they left behind. Invasion, rebellion and usurpation could and did occur during the crusaders’ long-term absence, but secular and papal protection might, in unison, combat exploitation by the crusaders’ enemies or other opportunists. 5 Table of Contents Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 1. From Pilgrimage to the First Crusade Protection Privilege 33 2. Comital Regencies of the First Crusade: the Cases of Flanders and Champagne 64 3. The Consolidation of Protection, 1123-95 109 4. Royal Crusade Regencies in France and Germany: the Second Crusade 134 5. Crusade Regencies in Flanders and Champagne, 1145-77 168 6. The Contribution of Innocent III and His Influence on the Papal Protection of Honorius III 211 7. Crusade Regencies in Flanders, Champagne, the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire, 1189-1222 235 Conclusion: The Political Impact of the Departure of the Crusaders 269 Bibliography 280 Appendix: Translated Sources in Original Language 303 All translations included in the thesis are the author’s own, unless indicated otherwise in the footnote. The reader is directed to the Appendix to consult the sources in the original language. 6 Abbreviations AA Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. and trans. S.B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007). C.C.C.M. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout, 1966-). DC The Councils of Urban II, Vol. 1 Decreta Claromontensia, ed. R. Somerville (Amsterdam, 1972). DEL De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, ed. and trans. C.W. David, with a new foreword and bibliography by J.P. Phillips (New York, 2001). FC Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana, ed. H. Hagenmayer (Heidelberg, 1913). GN Guibert of Nogent, ‘Dei Gesta per Francos et cinq autres textes’, C.C.C.M., vol. 127A, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1996). JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History Layettes Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, 5 vols., ed. A. Teulet (Paris, 1863- 1909). MGH Const. Monumenta Germaniae Historica Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum (Hannover and Leipzig 1893-). MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores (Hannover and Leipzig, 1871-). MGH SRG Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum seperatim editi (Hannover and Berlin, 1871-). OV Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols., ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1969-80). PL Patrologiae cursus completus latina, 217 vols. and 4 vols. of indexes, ed. J.P. Migne (Paris, 1844-64). RHC Oc. Recueil des historiens des croisades, Historiens occidentaux, 5 vols. ed. Académie des Inscriptions des Belles-Lettres (Paris, 1841-95). RHGF Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M. Bouquet et al., 24 vols. (Paris, 1737-1904). WM William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 2 vols., ed. and trans. R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998). 7 Introduction Historiography This thesis is the first full scale study to assess the protection privileges granted to crusaders and their families and possessions. The research examines the origins of that privilege and, in a marked contrast to other work on the subject considers how that protection worked. This study builds on existing scholarship but goes beyond the perception of the protection privilege as a mere technicality.1 Thus by concentrating on the consistent role of that pledge in papal preaching for the crusades, the protection will be established as an added attraction to take the cross because it gave the crusaders and their families a privileged status and removed an impediment – the potential exploitation of the crusaders’ absences. Unlike the other crusade privileges, protection is rarely recognised as part of the recruitment process. These [crusaders] with the prospect of exile in front of them set aside that which they held in great favour leaving behind their most distinguished wives and most esteemed sons. Not to mention [their] estates and possessions which, though extraneous to ourselves yet make such an impression on us, how the affections of husbands and wives can be mutually torn apart without risk to either, thanks to their children being a link between them and even making them stick together.2 Thus Guibert of Nogent described the crusaders leaving behind their wives and children. This text casts into sharp relief the significance of the crusade in relation to familial bonds.3 Clearly other issues were at play here, notably the monastic and sacrificial overtones of leaving all behind to follow Christ, which dominated First Crusade preaching and remained powerful images in the thirteenth-century.4 Nonetheless, the language Guibert employed in this passage is telling, suggesting that beyond breaking emotional ties, wives and children were given relatively little 1 J.A. Brundage gives the protection privilege very little space in his seminal work Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison, 1969). 2 GN, p.132; trans. M.A. Hall; Appendix, p.304. 3 OV, vol. 5, pp.16-17; FC, pp.162-63; AA, p.3. 4 J.S.C. Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an Act of Love’, History, vol. 65 (1980), pp.179-80. 8 consideration. Effectively they were both literally left behind and figuratively put aside in favour of the greater cause of the First Crusade. One purpose of this investigation is to consider how far this was the case.