Crusaders and Jurists : the Legal Consequences of Crusader Status

The legal consequences of taking the cross developed slowly during the course of the twelfth century, but by 1215 had become tolerably well-defined. Some versions of the crusading canon of the Council of Clermont (1095) spoke in vague terms of the "ecclesiastical protection" that crusaders were to enjoy, but failed to specify precisely what this meant. Paschal II (1099-1118) clarified the matter slightly in a letter of 1099 in which he declared that returning crusaders were entitled to recover any property that they had possessed at the time of their departure on the expedition. The extent of this property entitlement nevertheless remained unclear, as appears from a case in 1105-1106 described by Ivo of Chartres. Ivo, the most eminent canonist of his generation, found the whole matter so perplexing that he declined to rule on the case until he received clari¬ fication from the pope. The First Lateran Council (1123) spelled out some further elements of crusade privileges, as did Eugene III (1145-1153) when he proclaimed the second crusade in 1145. It was not until the pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216), however, that a definitive catalogue of the privileges attached to crusader status fi¬ nally emerged. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) codified the entire mat¬ ter in a form that persisted in its essentials until the close of the Middle Ag¬ es.Brundage James Arthur. Crusaders and Jurists : the Legal Consequences of Crusader Status. In: Le concile de Clermont de 1095 et l’appel à la croisade. Actes du Colloque Universitaire International de Clermont-Ferrand (23-25 juin 1995) Rome : École Française de Rome, 1997. pp. 141-154. (Publications de l'École française de Rome, 236