Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095) and the Crusade InduIgence PAUL E. CHEVEDDEN / Los ANGELES "The historian, ancient or modern, will always build his narrative around a backbone of propositions about past events which he must assume will never be seriously challenged, however interpretative the nature of that narrative may otherwise be". Anthony Snodgrass 1 Of all the ecclesiastical apparatus employed by the papacy to promote crusading, the Crusade indulgence was the most important. Like all institu­ tional arrangements, the Crusade indulgence underwent a process of de­ velopment. This development has been distorted by a teleological view of the facts that regards the Crusade indulgence as the direct expression of Pope Urban II's Jerusalem Crusade (1095-1102) and the indulgence that was set forth in Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095)2. To help sort out the facts and to better understand the Clermont indulgence, it will be useful to sketch out a likely scenario of how crusading institutions devel­ oped. Once crusading was initiated, the Church moved to create institutions that would assist it. The Crusade indulgence was one of these institutions. It was part of a process of systematization, or institutionalization, whereby the Church adopted or created structural arrangements that would pro­ mote crusading. The institutionalization of the Crusade was an extended process, and was only systematized during the pontificate of Pope Inno­ cent 111 (1198-1216). The institutional components that came to make up 1 A. M. SNODGRASS, Archaeology and the Emergence of Greece, Ithaca (NY) 2006, 48- 49. 2 My previous article, Canon 2 of the Council of Clermont (1095) and the Goal of the Eastern Crusade: "To liberate Jerusalem" or "To liberate the Church of God"? in: AHC 37/1 (2005) 57-108, explored Canon 2 for evidence of how the "First" Crusade was origi­ nally intended to unfold. Readers of the present article would profit from familiarity with the background provided in this earlier article. I am extremely grateful to Prof. Robert I. Burns, S.J., of the University of California at Los Angeles for helping me with the transla­ tion of the indulgenced grant issued by Pope Alexander 11 for Spain (see below note 56 and text) and to Prof. Donald J. Kagay of Albany State University for assistance on this text and the text of Canon 2, and for translating Urban II's letter to Bishop Gerland of Agrigento of 10 October 1098 (see below note 48). iAHe 37 (2005)1 254 Paul E. Chevedden the Crusade were assumed piecemeal and incorporated over aperiod of time. There was not only a pronounced time lag between the adoption of various institutional components - the indulgence, the vow, the Cross, etc. - but there was also a time lag before various institution al components crystallized into a standard panoply. Moreover, the standard panoply was originallya diverse assemblage of structural arrangements, not a prescribed repertoire, and some of the component parts of the panoply had earlier been associated with Christian holy war. The Cross, for example, had been the triumphal symbol of Christ the conqueror from as far back as the sec­ ond century and was first employed in batde in 312 by Emperor Constan­ tine I (306-37). The indulgence had first been used to promote Christi an holy war in 878 by Pope John VIII (872-82) (see below). "Votive obliga­ tions under which vows had bin ding consequences and created heritable duties" were first made compulsory upon Christian warriors during the early 1090s in Pope Urban II's Iberian Crusade that sought to restore the archbishopric of T arragona3• The combination of these elements together resulted from crusading; crusading did not result from the combination of these elements. And these elements were put together in a piecemeal way; they were not fused together all at once. The "Big Bang)) Theory 0/ the Crusade and Crusading Institutions This brief oudine of the development of crusading institutions has a certain aspect of historical plausibility, but it is at variance with the conventional history of the Crusades. Conventionally, the Crusades began with a "Big Bang", whereby crusading and crusading institutions emerged in a single moment, on the day Pope Urban 11 (1088-99) delivered his sermon at Clermont calling upon Christian warriors to march upon Jerusalem to lib­ erate the Eastern Church. All at once a militant mass movement came into being that was equally a fusion "of the holy war and pilgrimage traditions" , "a war against the Saracens for the defence of Christendom" , and a move­ ment of "reconquest of formerly Christian territories" . This enterprise "enjoyed papal blessings" and "a formal papal proclarnation of the war". Those that took part in it made "the crusader's vow" and wore "the insig- J 1. J. MCCRANK, Restoration and Reconquest in Medieval Catalonia: The Church and Principality of Tarragona, 971-1177, Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1974, 255-56,280- 81 nn. 30-34. On the Crusade vow, see J. A. BRUNDAGE, The Votive Obligations of Crusad­ ers: The Development of a Canonistic Doctrine, in: Tr. 24 (1968) 77 -118. Brundage is un­ aware that the Crusade vow was used prior to 1095. .