Medieval Religious Symbols and Practices: Spirituality, Pilgrimage, and Crusade

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Spiritual ideals that were at the heart of the foundations of new forms of twelfth-century religious life.

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By Dr. William J. Purkis
Professor of Medieval History
Head of School of History and Cultures
University of Birmingham

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In an article published in 1985 Christopher Brooke described the increasingly diverse nature of professed religious life in the central middle ages with the following words:

The religious life and religious aspirations [of the eleventh and twelfth centuries] resembled a spectrum, with many subtle shades of colour – many slight differences adding up in the end to major divisions. And these were often shifting, and all subject to the many winds which blew. The patron who wished to found a religious house or the aspirant who sought his vocation might often be inspired with a dazzling vision; but each must equally often have been confused and blinded by the profusion of indistinguishable goods laid out in the shop for his choice.¹

In this memorable passage of prose Professor Brooke captured the essence of what scholars often refer to as the ‘reformation’ of the twelfth century, when the previously predominant position of Benedictine monasticism became challenged by the emergence of new forms of professed religious life and the proliferation of a variety of new religious orders.² The relatively sudden emergence of a multiplicity of paths available to those wishing to pursue a religious vocation was, of course, also recognized by contemporaries. In his Historia Ecclesiastica, for example, Orderic Vitalis described the changes that were taking place in the first half of the twelfth century with a mixture of admiration and cynicism:

See, though evil abounds in the world, the devotion of the faithful in cloisters grows more abundant and bears fruit a hundredfold in the Lord’s field. Monasteries are founded everywhere in mountain valleys and plains, observing new rites and wearing different habits; the swarm of cowled monks spreads all over the world . . . In my opinion voluntary poverty, contempt for the world, and true religion inspire many of them, but many hypocrites and plausible counterfeiters are mixed with them, as tares with wheat.³

Orderic’s concentration here was on those who withdrew from the world completely to follow one form of cenobitic life or another, but other contemporary writers recognized that the range of activities that could be undertaken by those who had sworn religious vows was becoming increasingly varied. In the eleven-forties, for example, Otto of Freising, who was a Cistercian by profession, commemorated the transformations of his era by including a ‘description (descriptio) of the diverse religious orders’ in his Chronica sive Historia de Duabus Civitatibus. He wrote of the different ways in which a twelfth-century religious might pursue his vocation, which might entail an engagement with the world rather than a withdrawal from it:

Some of these [religious], dwelling in cities, in castles, in villages and in the countryside, impart to their neighbours by word and by example the rule of right living; others – not, indeed, avoiding intercourse with men but rather making provision for their own peace – shun crowds, and, devoting themselves to God alone, withdraw to retreats in the woods and in secluded places.⁴

Crucially, however, Otto ascribed to these groups and individuals common customs and practices, and in so doing recognized that there could be a degree of unity in the evident diversity that characterized his times. He noted, for example, that all religious abstained from eating meat, and that all were sworn to celibacy and renounced any contact with women.⁵ Most importantly, though, Otto believed that the religious of the world were united by two fundamental and related aspirations: first, the imitation of Christ;⁶ and second, the pursuit of the common life of the vita apostolica.⁷ In this respect, Otto’s description of ‘the various bands of saints’ provides a good example of the spiritual rhetoric that was applied by contemporaries to the reforming monastic movements of the eleventh and twelfth centuries:

All [religious] alike spend their lives on earth in purity of living and conscience, and in chastity like that of the angels in heaven. Having but one heart and mind they dwell as one in monasteries or churches; they sleep at the same time, they rise with one mind for prayer, they take food together in one house, [and] they devote themselves to prayer, to reading, and to work by day and night with inexhaustible vigilance . . . Renouncing their desires, their possessions and even their parents in accordance with the command of the Gospel, [they] continually bear the cross for the mortification of the flesh and, being filled with heavenly longings, follow Christ.⁸

At around the same time that Otto was working on his Chronica, a cleric from Liège was composing a more detailed study of the ‘diverse orders and professions that are in the Church’ (Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus et Professionibus qui sunt in Ecclesia).⁹ The writer in question, who was probably an Augustinian canon,¹⁰ produced an account that bears comparison with Otto of Freising’s descriptio. Like Otto, the author of the Libellus recognized the range of vocations available to those who wished to take up a religious life, and categorized them according to their proximity to the secular world. He wrote of hermits, ‘who usually live alone or with a few others’, and drew distinctions between three types of monk (those ‘who live close to men, such as the Cluniacs and the like’, those ‘who remove themselves far from men, such as the Cistercians and the like’, and those ‘who are called seculars, who ignore their profession’), and between three types of canon (those ‘who establish themselves far from men, such as the Premonstratensians and the canons of Saint-Josse’, those ‘who have their houses near the activities of men, such as the canons of St. Quentin in the field and of St. Victor’, and, finally, those ‘who live among men of the world and are called seculars’).¹¹ The Libellus’s text also suggested that there was to be a supplementary discussion of other more nebulous forms of religious life, but this section was either unwritten or has been lost.¹²

A further similarity between the Libellus and Otto’s descriptio was that both recognized that the establishment in the twelfth century of a variety of forms of religious life was a positive rather than a negative development.¹³ The Libellus’s text was prefaced with a statement that acknowledged that it was perfectly proper for those who followed the ‘way of God’ (uia Dei) for ‘some [to] walk one way and others another’.¹⁴ In a subsequent section the Libellus’s author provided a musical metaphor to illustrate this point further. Responding to potential criticisms of the differing ways in which individuals might approach the pursuit of an eremitical life, he wrote that:

If it still displeases you that all men of this calling do not live in the same way, look at the creation fashioned by the good Creator in various ways, and how a harmony has been achieved from different chords, so that the heavens are placed above, the earth below, water made heavier, air lighter, man wiser than the beasts, one above and another below, and you will not wonder if even in God’s service different things are preferred, for according to the Gospel: In my Father’s house there are many mansions.¹⁵

But in many ways the most significant parallel between the work of Otto of Freising and that of the author of the Libellus was their shared perception of the spiritual ideals that were at the heart of the foundations of new forms of twelfth-century religious life. For the author of the Libellus, like Otto, sought to demonstrate how all of the new religious orders of his age were modelled on ideals of imitatio Christi (and, in some cases, vita apostolica), and to illustrate how the brethren of those orders could find inspiration and justification for their ways of life in the writings of both the Old and New Testaments. In his discussion of hermits, for example, the Libellus’s author stated that he would ‘consider whether perhaps we can find a likeness (similitudo) of these servants of God among the first men’, and went on to show how Abel had lived in quasi-eremitical pastoral isolation (Genesis 4:2–4):

We find therefore a distinct likeness to hermits in the first age, when we find the just Abel living in the shade of trees and intent on grazing his sheep, having doubtless sought solitude, where he can both live without being disturbed and feed the sheep, which are the signs of his innocence, and then taking the offspring of these sheep make an offering to God.¹⁶

Perhaps more tangible though was the precedent that the Libellus’s author provided for hermits from the life of Christ. He described how he wished to ‘see also whether our Jesus did anything that could be compared to this kind of life’, before suggesting that Christ’s withdrawal to the mountain (John 6:15) might offer a suitable parallel: ‘Accept joyfully then my Lord Jesus, who fled into the mountain or the desert, and you will have before you examples you can imitate’.¹⁷

This methodology of justification through scriptural analysis was applied to all of the various forms of religious profession considered in the Libellus because, as the text’s author put it, ‘I see that Jesus demonstrated in himself the likeness (similitudo) of almost all the callings of the church, which we shall show in their place as well as we can’.¹⁸ In this respect, the Libellus’s project was more focused and detailed than that of Otto of Freising’s descriptio, but both texts’ accounts of the increasingly diverse nature of twelfth-century religious vocations concentrated, understandably, on forms of asceticism that required individuals to commit to a lifetime of withdrawal from (or, in some cases, engagement with) the world. However, it is striking that at around the same time that writers such as Otto of Freising and the anonymous author of the Libellus were justifying innovations in professed religion by citing precedents from the Old and New Testaments, similar endeavours were taking place in relation to forms of devotional undertaking that required shorter, temporary votive obligations. In fact, there is a range of evidence to suggest that certain changes in the religious practices of the twelfth-century laity – namely developments in ideas of penitential pilgrimage and the emergence of the crusading ideal – ought also to be included in wider considerations of the ‘reformation’ of twelfth-century religious life.¹⁹

One of the most striking examples of the way ideas and rhetoric more normally associated with the spirituality of reformed monasticism influenced lay religious practices can be found with reference to the cult of St. James the Great. The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela was experiencing a period of significant growth in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,²⁰ and it is clear that as part of this process of expansion the cult’s promoters were attempting to codify their institutional identity by redefining the hagiographical and iconographical representations of their saint.²¹ The most significant output of this codification was the production in c.1140 of the Liber Sancti Jacobi,²² a compilation of five books that dealt with various aspects of the cult of St. James and the pilgrimage to Compostela, including a volume of liturgical materials, a collection of miracle stories, an account of the translatio of the saint’s relics from the Holy Land to Iberia, and a guide for pilgrims who were en route to the Galician shrine.²³ The Liber’s opening volume of liturgy included a sermon known as Veneranda Dies,²⁴ which amounted to a lengthy exposition on the virtues of pilgrimage in general and on the merits of penitential journeys to Compostela in particular, and which contains important evidence for scholars interested in monastic influences on lay religious culture.

The Veneranda Dies sermon is a valuable source for a number of reasons. First, it provides a wealth of information about the practicalities and difficulties associated with twelfth-century pilgrimage; it included, for example, repeated condemnations of those sinful individuals who sought to hamper the pilgrim’s progress, such as innkeepers (who are likened to ‘the traitor Judas who betrayed the Lord by kissing him’),²⁵ prostitutes,²⁶ corrupt basilica guards,²⁷ moneychangers,²⁸ false pardoners (‘as mild as sheep on the outside but rapacious wolves on the inside’),²⁹ ‘crafty merchants’³⁰ and toll collectors.³¹ Second, it gives testimony to the international profile of the saint’s cult, claiming that pilgrims from no fewer than seventy-four different nations had recently venerated St. James’s shrine,³² and that the saint’s miracles had been witnessed across the whole of western Christendom.³³ But perhaps most pertinently, the central part of the sermon consisted of a thorough discussion of the idea of pilgrimage itself, which included an analysis of the biblical models and precedents for the practice. In this respect, Veneranda Dies bears direct comparison with contemporaneous texts, such as the Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus, that were being composed to justify the variety of new forms of professed religious life that had emerged in the first half of the twelfth century.

Echoing the language used by the author of the Libellus, the sermon’s analysis of the scriptural basis for pilgrimage began by explaining that it was necessary to show ‘how the pilgrim road had its origins among the ancient fathers, and how it should be walked’.³⁴ The sermon then went on to illustrate how the practice of pilgrimage could be traced back to the very first book of the Old Testament:

Adam is considered the first pilgrim, since because of his transgression of the commandment of God he was sent from paradise into the exile of this world . . . Similarly, the pilgrim is sent by his priest on a pilgrimage into a type of exile from his own region because of his transgressions, and if he has confessed properly and has completed his life after taking onto himself proper penitence, he is saved through the grace of Christ.³⁵

Further Old Testament parallels were to be found in the lives of Abraham, ‘[who] was a pilgrim, since he went forth from his country to another as he was told by the Lord’,³⁶ and of Jacob ‘[who] arose as a pilgrim, since, having gone out from his country, he travelled to Egypt and stayed’.³⁷ But a much greater proportion of the sermon’s discussion dealt with the way the New Testament supplied exempla for pilgrims. Here, attention focused initially on the notion that pilgrimage was an act of Christo-mimesis and that by the very nature of their devotional undertaking pilgrims were imitators of Christ. The basis for this idea lay in an interpretation of Christ’s post-Resurrection encounter with two of his followers on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35). According to Veneranda Dies, on this occasion ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, returning from Jerusalem, after he had risen from the dead, appeared first as a pilgrim, as the disciples meeting him said: You alone are a pilgrim in Jerusalem’.³⁸

It seems unlikely that this reading of the Emmaus narrative would have been regarded as far-fetched by contemporaries; in a different context, the author of the Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus described how Christ’s life could provide exempla for all manner of religious activities just as it was used to exemplify the grades of the ecclesiastical hierarchy:

If therefore the Lord Jesus, as has often previously been said, was a lector by his reading of Isaiah in the synagogue, was a door-keeper by his driving the moneylenders from the temple, was an exorcist by casting out demons, was a candle-bearer by giving sight to the blind, was a subdeacon by ministering, a levite by preaching the Gospel of his reign, and a priest by offering himself, it will not be absurd to say that by withdrawing into the mountain or the desert, as is proper for hermits, he consecrated their life in himself.³⁹

Indeed, the suggestion in the Gospel of St. Luke that Christ could be represented as a peregrinus was also taken up by the twelfth-century sculptors working at Santo Domingo de Silos, a monastery near Burgos, where he was depicted, in an adaptation of the road to Emmaus story, carrying a pilgrim’s staff and a bag bearing the cockleshell – the traditional accoutrements of the pilgrim travelling to Compostela.⁴⁰ Here, Christ was not only represented as a pilgrim, but a pilgrim of St. James, and it therefore seems possible that this image was intended to communicate the idea that those peregrini who followed in his footsteps to the north-west corner of the Iberian peninsula were to be regarded as virtuous imitatores Christi.

Such depictions of Christ-as-pilgrim are, of course, remarkable in themselves, but in many respects it was the final aspect of the Veneranda Dies sermon’s biblical modelling for pilgrimage that was the most significant. For, having established that pilgrims were imitators of Christ, the sermon went on to show that the devotional undertaking of the pilgrim was also a kind of vita apostolica. What is more, pilgrims were portrayed in the sermon as not only living in accordance with the values of ‘poverty and preaching’ that Christ had enjoined on his disciples (and that were widely associated with the ‘active’ apostolic life);⁴¹ they were also seen to be following a model of the communal life espoused by the brethren of the primitive church. According to Veneranda Dies:

The apostles, therefore, whom the Lord sent out without money or footwear, were also pilgrims. Because of this it is in no way allowed for pilgrims to bring money, unless they expend this money on the needy. If he sent the apostles without money, what will become of those who now travel with gold and silver, eating and drinking to fulfilment and imparting nothing to the poor? Certainly they are not true pilgrims, but the thieves and bandits of God . . . [For] just as the multitude of believers had one heart and one soul and no one called something his own, but all held all in common, so must all things be held in common for all pilgrims: one heart and one soul.⁴²

These were striking images that were developed further by the provision of specific examples from the New Testament. Given the context, it is not surprising that the sermon focused on one apostle in particular, St. James the Great, to stress how pilgrimage to Compostela was a kind of active apostolate and how pilgrims ought to follow his blueprint for asceticism. ‘If Blessed James went through the world as a pilgrim without money and footwear’, the sermon questioned, ‘why do pilgrims go to him oversupplied with diverse riches and paying out nothing to the needy?’⁴³ Indeed, although it should be stressed that St. James was not the only apostle to have had his credentials as a pilgrim emphasized in the sermon, it does seem possible that the equation in Veneranda Dies between pilgrimage and the apostolic life may have provided the inspiration for the idea that St. James could be portrayed in sculpture and other visual media as a pilgrim travelling to his own shrine – an image that was to become ubiquitous in the middle ages and beyond.⁴⁴

In a context in which pilgrims were regarded as followers of Christ and his apostles, it is perhaps to be expected that throughout the Veneranda Dies sermon penitential pilgrimage was portrayed as a quasi-monastic devotional exercise. Like those who swore monastic vows, pilgrims were understood to be committing themselves to a form of religious poverty and were demonstrating their willingness to endure the austerity, hardship and suffering associated with their penitential undertaking. These themes were elucidated in the following words, which in some ways recall the language applied by contemporaries to the ascetic practices of the Carthusians or the Cistercians:

The pilgrim’s way is the best way, but the most narrow. The way is, in fact, narrow that leads man to life, and wide and spacious that leads to death. The pilgrim’s way is for the righteous: lack of vices, mortification of the body, restitution of virtues, remission of sins, penitence of the penitent, journey of the just, love of the saints, faith in the resurrection and remuneration of the blessed, distancing of the infernal, propitiation of the heavens. It reduces fat foods, it checks gluttony of the stomach, it tames lust, it suppresses carnal desires, which militate against the soul. It purifies the spirit, it provokes man towards contemplation, it humbles the lofty, it beatifies the humble. It loves poverty; it hates the inventory that avarice keeps but that generosity loves when one dispenses it to the needy. It rewards those abstaining and working well, but it does not free those sinning and avaricious on it.⁴⁵

It is not entirely clear why advocates for the cult of St. James felt the need to redefine the ideology of pilgrimage to Compostela in this manner; the nature of the devotional activity that they were promoting was certainly not revolutionary in the way that the observances of several of the new religious orders undoubtedly were.⁴⁶ It may be the case that the content of the Veneranda Dies sermon unconsciously reflected the character of twelfth-century religious discourse; equally, it is also possible that the sermon’s anonymous writer⁴⁷ was attempting to tap into contemporary enthusiasm for ideals of imitatio Christi and vita apostolica, which were evidently of interest to ecclesiastics and laymen alike.⁴⁸ Either way, the material presented in the Veneranda Dies sermon marked a significant development in the history of ideas associated with the cult of St. James the Great and established an iconographical theme that would proliferate for hundreds of years. But it is not only in texts and images that account for the spirituality of penitential pilgrimage to Compostela that monastic influences on eleventh- and twelfth-century lay devotional activities can be detected. Around forty years before the Veneranda Dies sermon was composed and the Liber Sancti Jacobi was compiled, thousands of armed pilgrims had set out from western Europe on the First Crusade with the intention of liberating Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the perceived tyranny of Islam, and it is clear from the many accounts of the crusade that survive that contemporaries understood participation in this expedition to be comparable to entry into professed religious life.⁴⁹ It is also clear that contemporaries believed that, like those who renounced their homes and possessions to pursue a religious vocation, the crusaders had taken the cross in imitation of Christ.⁵⁰

The anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum opened his narrative of the First Crusade with the following words, and in so doing demonstrated how in touch he was with the spiritual zeitgeist of the late eleventh century:

When now that time drew nigh, to which the Lord Jesus points out to his faithful every day, especially in the Gospel where he says If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, there was a great stirring throughout all the regions of Gaul, so that if anyone with a pure heart and mind zealously desired to follow God, and faithfully wished to bear the cross after him, he could make no delay in speedily taking the road to the Holy Sepulchre.⁵¹

The Gesta’s author went on to show that the crusade message of 1095–6 had obviously touched a nerve among contemporaries because, he wrote, after it had been widely disseminated, ‘the Franks sewed crosses on their right shoulders, saying with one mind that they followed the footsteps of Christ’.⁵² It is, of course, impossible to know how far ideas of imitatio Christi resonated with individual crusaders,⁵³ but it is striking nevertheless how many contemporary ecclesiastics described crusading using ideas and rhetoric that were borrowed from professed religion,⁵⁴ and how many emphasized the fact that the crusaders had set out ‘to follow in the footsteps of the Gospel’.⁵⁵ One writer went so far as to present the crusade as the consummate act of Christo-mimesis:

As the man errs who strives to hold back a wheel set in motion down a slope, when it gains speed, so errs the wretch who will not forsake the unclean world: he is ruined while he pursues what is doomed to ruin. And so let every man shake off hesitation, because the world is ours for but an hour, and seek that which no length of time eats away. Let no man’s farm, his fine house, or the world hold him back from seeking the light by taking up his cross. Christ has gone before, and the victory has fallen to Christ: the cross he carried was our healing. Therefore let him who wishes to imitate Christ on equal terms bow his neck and take up the cross in his turn.⁵⁶

As the Gesta Francorum’s testimony indicates, the origins of these equations between crusading and the imitation of Christ can almost certainly be traced back to the papal preaching for the campaign, which had been initiated at the Council of Clermont in November 1095.⁵⁷ Various writers composed reports of the sermon delivered at Clermont by Pope Urban II; many of them included references to ideas of imitatio Christi in one form or another. Among the most important is the testimony of Robert of Rheims, who is likely to have witnessed the pope’s preaching at first hand. According to his version of the sermon, Urban was said to have proclaimed that:

Whoever therefore shall carry out this holy pilgrimage shall make a vow to God, and shall offer himself as a living sacrifice … and he shall display the sign of the cross of the Lord on his front or on his chest. When, truly, he wishes to return from there having fulfilled his vow, let him place the cross between his shoulders; in fact, by this twofold action they will fulfil that precept of the Lord which he prescribed himself through the Gospel: He that does not carry his cross and come after me is not worthy of me.⁵⁸

If Robert’s testimony is accurate (and there is no real reason to think that on this point it is not), it would seem that Pope Urban was preaching the crusade as a Christo-mimetic devotional exercise, whose participants were supposed to show their commitment to the expedition, and to the idea of imitating Christ, by adopting the sign of the cross. In so doing, the crusaders were plainly seen to be fulfilling one of the principal injunctions on discipleship that Christ had given to his apostles, as recorded in Matthew 16:24 and its variants, and also to be following the example of selfless suffering that Christ had set during his Passion. This was certainly how one of Robert’s contemporaries, Baldric of Bourgueil, saw it; he wrote that Pope Urban had ordered potential crusaders to sew crosses onto their clothes ‘because he had proclaimed the Lord to have said to his followers: If anyone does not carry his cross and come after me, he cannot be my disciple’.⁵⁹

As the passage from Otto of Freising quoted above suggests, the idea of following Christ’s example by bearing his cross was generally understood in the twelfth century in a figurative sense rather than a literal one; it is unlikely that the religious described by Otto in his Chronica ‘took the cross’ in the same way that the crusaders did. In this respect, Pope Urban’s preaching at Clermont appears to have been pioneering,⁶⁰ because he succeeded in condensing the abstract theological ideal of imitatio Christi into a comprehensible package of image and gesture that could transcend linguistic, cultural and educational boundaries,⁶¹ perhaps in much the same way that later advocates for the cult of St. James of Compostela may have hoped that presenting St. James as a pilgrim would cultivate the idea that penitential pilgrimage could be a form of the active apostolic life. The cross was a powerful symbol of imitatio Christi that was to be used time and again by future crusade preachers; in 1208, for example, Pope Innocent III drew a series of emotive connections between the badge worn by crusaders and the cross that Christ had carried to Calvary: ‘You receive a soft and gentle cross’, he wrote in a letter addressed to the crusader Duke Leopold VI of Austria, ‘he bore one that was sharp and hard. You wear it superficially on your clothing; he endured it in the reality of his flesh. You sew yours on with linen and silk threads; he was nailed to his with iron and hard nails’.⁶²

It would seem, therefore, that in his innovative delineation of a relationship between the crusade badge and the cross of the Crucifixion at Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II was using ideas of imitatio Christi as a model for crusading and its rituals in much the same way that advocates for the new religious orders (and, indeed, for the pilgrimage to Compostela) found inspiration and legitimacy for their observances through the interpretation of scriptural texts pertaining to the life of Christ.

The contemporary reaction to Pope Urban’s preaching gives some indication of the efficacy of the idea that ‘taking the cross’ ought to be perceived as an act of Christo-mimesis. The crusade badge was described variously as a ‘sign of mortification’⁶³ and a ‘stigma of the Lord’s Passion’,⁶⁴ and in one account the crusaders were even compared to Simon of Cyrene,⁶⁵ who was, of course, an excellent scriptural blueprint for cross-bearing since he had literally ‘carried the cross after Christ’ on the march to Calvary.⁶⁶ Some responses to the crusade message were more extreme: a number of would-be crusaders were so eager to demonstrate their willingness to share in the sufferings of Christ that they burnt the sign of the cross onto their flesh using white-hot irons.⁶⁷ Remarkably, though, this self-mutilation was not restricted to a ‘lunatic fringe’ of uneducated crusaders; one of the individuals in question was Baldwin of Caesarea, an abbot who had left Europe as chaplain to one of the crusade’s leaders and was to go on to become one of the most senior ecclesiastics in the Latin East. Guibert of Nogent offered a revealing account of this man’s motives when he wrote that, although the branding had been unwise, Baldwin had simply been over-zealous in his desire ‘to emulate God’.⁶⁸

The equations between crusading and the imitation of Christ did not end with the symbol of the crusader’s votive obligation, however. Like those whom the author of the Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus described as pursuing a monastic vocation, the crusaders were understood by many contemporaries to be following ‘the way of God (via Dei)’,⁶⁹ or, as the crusade was known to others, ‘the way of the Lord (via Domini)’⁷⁰ and ‘the way of Christ (via Christi)’.⁷¹ But in contrast to cloistered monks, whose purpose was to seek out the heavenly rather than the earthly Jerusalem,⁷² the crusaders were quite literally walking and worshipping ‘in the place where his feet have stood’,⁷³ and the physicality of their mimesis was stressed by a number of writers. In 1098, for instance, the Greek patriarch of Jerusalem wrote a letter to the West in which he called for fresh recruits to swell the ranks of the depleted crusader army; he implored the arms-bearers of Christendom ‘to fight in the army of the Lord in the same place in which the Lord fought, in which Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps’.⁷⁴ This phrase, which almost certainly referred to the call to discipleship promulgated in 1 Peter 2:21, is a particularly clear example of the way preachers used episodes from the life of Christ as exempla to inspire potential crusaders. Their efforts were certainly well received by those who wrote accounts of the campaign; the crusaders who reached Jerusalem in 1099, for example, were depicted as having an acute awareness of the parallels between the hardships they endured and the suffering that Christ had experienced during his Passion. During the final phase of the city’s siege one combatant, Cono of Montaigu, was said to have reminded his comrades that ‘our Lord Jesus Christ [also] suffered on a Friday in this very place’.⁷⁵ Similarly, those who lost their lives on the expedition were believed to have shown their willingness to die as martyrs for the Christian faith.⁷⁶ Baldric of Bourgueil wrote that it was ‘beautiful’ that the crusaders had been given an opportunity to die for Christ in the city in which he had died for them,⁷⁷ and he made reference to the text of John 15:13 as a source of inspiration for crusaders and their families: Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.⁷⁸

When the frequency and potency of these ideas of Christo-mimesis is taken into consideration, it is perhaps a little easier to understand why Pope Urban’s crusade appeal stretched beyond the arms-bearing classes, who had of course been his target audience, to stimulate a positive response among a sector of society that he had certainly not intended to provoke to crusade: those who had already taken religious vows. The phenomenon of religious abandoning their monasteries and hermitages to undertake pilgrimages was not unprecedented in and of itself,⁷⁹ but the scale of the response in 1095–6 was clearly felt to be worthy of note by contemporary annalists and chroniclers. There are numerous references in the narrative sources for the First Crusade to the fact that ‘abbots, monks and hermits’ were deserting their lives of ascetic stabilitas and making for Jerusalem in response to Pope Urban’s preaching, and a series of letters from the time give vivid testimony to the problems caused among the religious communities of the West by the crusade message.⁸⁰ Indeed, one of the few surviving missives directly concerning the crusade that Urban himself wrote amounts to an urgently-dispatched communication to the brethren of the congregation of Vallombrosa, instructing them that crusading was not suitable for ‘those who have abandoned the world and vowed themselves to spiritual warfare’.⁸¹ But such problems were not limited to the ten-nineties; some fifty years later, Bernard of Clairvaux, who had taken the primary responsibility for preaching the Second Crusade,⁸² was forced to address a strongly-worded letter to the abbots of each and every Cistercian house in western Christendom, reminding them that in spite of its Christo-mimetic spiritual foundations the crusade was not a suitable devotional undertaking for monks:

Why do you seek the glory of the world when you have chosen to lie forgotten in the house of God? Why are you wandering through the countryside when you are professed to lead a life of solitude? Why do you sew the cross on your clothes, when you always carry it in your heart, if you keep the religious life?⁸³

In this final phrase, Bernard was no doubt referring to the tension between monastic (or ‘figurative’) and secular (or ‘literal’) ideas of imitatio Christi that had arisen as a result of the emergence of a new strand of Christo-mimetic piety after Pope Urban’s preaching at Clermont in 1095.

Why did these monks and hermits believe that crusading was a viable alternative to the religious professions to which they had already vowed themselves? An approach to answering this question conceivably lies in the words with which Professor Brooke opened his 1985 article, from which I have already quoted:

If you were a religious of the 11th or 12th centuries choosing the order in which you were to find your vocation, how did you distinguish order from order, monk from canon? How did you determine gradations of the ascetic life? . . . At a time when asceticism and the religious orders flourished as never before, choice must have been bewildering.⁸⁴

Ideals of imitatio Christi, however they might have been interpreted, were among the most significant stimuli to recruitment into religious life in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.⁸⁵ In this context, it seems at least a possibility that the ‘crusading monks’ of the ten-nineties and eleven-forties may have believed that in responding to the preaching of Pope Urban II or Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux they were opting for a viable alternative to the cloister and, perhaps, choosing what they perceived to be a ‘better’ way to follow Christ.⁸⁶ If this was indeed the case, it would suggest that pilgrimage and crusading might have been understood (rightly or wrongly) to have offered religious of the eleventh and twelfth centuries even more choice than they already had. It would also suggest that two further shades of colour could be added to Professor Brooke’s ‘spectrum’ of twelfth-century religious life.

Endnotes

1. C. N. L. Brooke, ‘Monk and canon: some patterns in the religious life of the twelfth century’, Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition, ed. W. J. Sheils, Studies in Church History, xxii (Oxford, 1985), 129.
2. See, e.g., B. M. Bolton, The Medieval Reformation (1983); H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism: a Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe, 1000–1150 (New York, 1984); G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1996).
3. Orderic Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (6 vols., Oxford, 1968–80), iv. 310–13: En abundante iniquitate in mundo, uberius crescit fidelium in religione deuotio, et multiplicata seges in agro surgit dominico. In saltibus et campestribus passim construuntur cenobia, nouisque ritibus uariisque scematibus trabeata, peragrant orbem cucullatorum examina . . . Voluntaria paupertas mundique contemptus ut opinor in plerisque feruet ac uera religio, sed plures eis hipocritae seductoriique simulatores permiscentur ut lolium tritico.
4. Otto of Freising, Chronica sive Historia de Duabus Civitatibus, ed. A. Hofmeister and W. Lammers (Berlin, 1960) (hereafter Otto of Freising), p. 560: Quorum alii in urbibus, castellis et vicis et agris commorantes proximis normam recte vivendi verbo et exemplo tribuunt; alii non quidem commanentiam hominum asperantes, sed quieti suae amplius providentes frequentiam fugiunt solique Deo vacantes ad silvarum abditorumque locorum latibula se conferunt (translation from C. C. Mierow, The Two Cities: a Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D., by Otto, Bishop of Freising (New York, 2002), p. 446).
5. Otto of Freising, p. 562.
6. For the context, see especially G. Constable, ‘The ideal of the imitation of Christ’, in G. Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 143–248.
7. For the context, see especially M.-D. Chenu, ‘Monks, canons, and laymen in search of the apostolic life’, in Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, ed. and trans. J. Taylor and L. K. Little (Toronto, 1968), pp. 202–38; H. Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. S. Rowan (Notre Dame, Ind., 1995).
8. Otto of Freising, p. 560: diversa sunt sanctorum agmina, qui propriis desideriis, facultatibus, parentibus iuxta mandatum evangelicum abrenuntiantes crucemque per mortificationem carnis iugiter portantes caelesti desiderio pleni Christum secuntur . . . Eque tamen omnes vitae et conscientiae puritate ac sanctimonia caelesti et angelica in terris vita degunt. Commanent autem ‘cor unum et animam unam’ habentes in unum in cenobiis vel ecclesiis, somnum simul capiunt, unanimiter ad orationem surgunt, in una domo pariter reficiuntur, orationi, lectioni, operi die noctuque ita indefessa incumbunt vigilantia (citation from Acts 4:32). For a full translation of this passage, see Mierow, pp. 445–6.
9. Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus et Professionibus qui sunt in Ecclesia, ed. and trans. G. Constable and B. S. Smith (rev. edn., Oxford, 2003) (hereafter Libellus).
10. For the authorship of the Libellus, see Libellus, pp. xv–xviii.
11. Libellus, pp. 4–5, 16–17, 38–9, 50–1, 66–7, 86–7.
12. Libellus, pp. 4–5, where it is stated that the Libellus’s analysis would include those who were nec canonici nec monachi nec heremitae nec inclusi sed deicolae uel licoisi, as well as a consideration of the religious opportunities available to women.
13. For the context, see especially G. Constable, ‘The diversity of religious life and acceptance of social pluralism in the twelfth century’, in History, Society and the Churches: Essays in Honour of Owen Chadwick, ed. D. Beales and G. Best (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 29–47.
14. Libellus, pp. 2–3: Dilectissimo fratri suo .R. unica dilectione sibi coniunctus frater .R. uiam Dei bene ac fidenter ut coepit tenere, in qua alius sic, alius sic ambulat.
15. Libellus, pp. 14–15: Si autem adhuc tibi displicet quod omnes huius professionis homines non uno modo uiuunt, inspice facturam mundi a bono conditore diuerse dispositam, et de diuersis concordem effecisse armoniam, ut caelum superius, terra inferius, aqua grauior, aer leuior, homo belua sapientior, unum supra, alterum infra positum sit, et non miraberis si etiam in seruis Dei alter alteri preferatur, cum secundum euangelium ‘in domo patris mansiones multae sint’ (citation from John 14:2).
16. Libellus, pp. 4–9: Habemus ergo in priori aetate heremitarum similitudinem expressam, ubi inuenimus Abel iustum in arborum umbra morantem et pascuis ouium intentum sine dubio solitudinem quaesisse, ubi et sine tumultu uiueret, et oues suae innocentiae indices nutriret, ac deinde de eisdem ouibus fructus capiens Domino offerret.
17. Libellus, pp. 10–13: accipe etiam gratanter dominum meum Iesum in montem uel in desertum fugisse, et habebis ante te quos imitari possis.
18. Libellus, pp. 10–11: Video etiam dominum Iesum pene omnium professionum aecclesiasticarum similitudinem in se ipso demonstrasse, quod etiam pro posse suis locis ostendemus, cum de aliis professionibus sermonem texuerimus.
19. As will be illustrated below, pilgrimage and crusading were devotional activities that were intended primarily for bellatores and laboratores rather than for oratores. For the context, see G. Constable, ‘The orders of society’, in Constable, Three Studies, pp. 249–360.
20. J. Sumption, Pilgrimage: an Image of Mediaeval Religion (1975), p. 116, wrote that during this period the pilgrim road to Compostela became ‘the busiest trunk road in Christendom’.
21. For the context, see R. A. Fletcher, St. James’s Catapult: the Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford, 1984).
22. Liber Sancti Jacobi: Codex Calixtinus, ed. K. Herbers and M. Santos Noia (Santiago de Compostela, 1998). See also the Historia Compostellana, ed. E. Falque Rey (Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaeualis, lxx, Turnhout, 1988); and for comment, B. F. Reilly, ‘The Historia Compostelana: the genesis and composition of a twelfth-century Spanish Gesta’, Speculum, xliv (1969), 78–85.
23. The Liber also included a Latin text of the Historia Turpini, which purported to be an eyewitness account of Charlemagne’s eighth-century ‘crusading’ wars in the Iberian peninsula. For a discussion of the Historia Turpini and associations between St. James and Iberian crusading, see W. J. Purkis, Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c.1095–c.1187 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 139–65, 175–8.
24. For the Latin text of Veneranda Dies (hereafter V.D.), see Liber Sancti Jacobi, pp. 85–104. For a full English translation, see T. F. Coffey, L. K. Davidson and M. Dunn, The Miracles of Saint James: Translations from the Liber Sancti Jacobi (New York, 1996) (hereafter M.S.J.), pp. 8–56.
25. V.D., pp. 95–7; M.S.J., pp. 34–8: Cui illos similes dicam nisi Iude proditori qui Dominum tradidit osculando?
26. V.D., p. 96; M.S.J., p. 36.
27. V.D., p. 97; M.S.J., p. 38.
28. V.D., pp. 97–9; M.S.J., pp. 38–9, 41–3.
29. V.D., p. 98; M.S.J., pp. 39–40.
30. V.D., p. 99; M.S.J., pp. 43–4.
31. V.D., p. 101; M.S.J., pp. 48–9. It is striking that these groups were largely condemned because of their engagement with the money economy, which was in direct contrast to the pilgrim’s adoption of voluntary poverty. For the context, see L. K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (1978).
32. V.D., p. 89; M.S.J., p. 18.
33. V.D., p. 90; M.S.J., p. 21.
34. V.D., p. 92; M.S.J., p. 26: Qualiter via peregrinalis a priscis patribus oriatur, et quomodo perambulari debeat, nobis est declarandum.
35. V.D., p. 92; M.S.J., pp. 26–7: Primus peregrinus Adam habetur, quia ob transgressionem precepti Dei a paradiso egressus in huius mundi exilio mittitur, et per Christi sanguinem et gratiam ipsius salvatur. Similiter peregrinus a proprio loco digressus, in peregrinacione propter transgressiones suas a sacerdote suo quasi in exilio mittitur, et per gratiam Christi, si bene confessus fuerit et in penitencia sibi coniuncta propriam vitam finierit, salvatur.
36. V.D., p. 92; M.S.J., p. 27: Abraham patriarcha peregrinus fuit, quia de patria sua in aliam profectus est, sicut illi a Domino dictum est.
37. V.D., p. 92; M.S.J., p. 27: Item Iacob patriarcha peregrinus extitit, quia de patria sua egressus in Egipto peregrinatur et commoratur.
38. V.D., p. 93; M.S.J., p. 27: Ipse Dominus noster Ihesus Christus postquam suscitavit a mortuis a Iherosolimis rediens primus peregrinus extitit, ut discipuli obviantes illi dixerunt: ‘Tu solus peregrinus es in Iherusalem’ (citation from Luke 24:18). From the context, it is clear enough that the peregrinus of the Vulgate ought to be translated here as ‘pilgrim’ rather than ‘stranger’, but the ambiguity in the sermon was almost certainly intentional.
39. Libellus, pp. 10–11: Si ergo dominus Iesus sicut et ante nos sepe dictum est legendo in libro Ysaiae intra sinagogam lector, et eliminando de templo nummularios hostiarius et eiciendo demones exorcista, et illuminando cecos ceroferarius, et ministrando subdiaconus, et predicando euangelium regni leuita, et se ipsum offerendo sacerdos, non erit absurdum si secedendo in montem uel in desertum quod heremitarum est proprium, uitam eorum in se ipso consecrasse dicatur. For the broader context, see R. E. Reynolds, The Ordinals of Christ from their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Berlin and New York, 1978); for an Iberian perspective, R. E. Reynolds, ‘An ordinal of Christ in medieval Catalan’, Harvard Theological Review, xcix (2006), 103–10.
40. For a brief discussion of this sculpture and its dating, see C. Hohler, ‘The badge of St. James’, The Scallop: Studies of a Shell and its Influence on Humankind, ed. I. Cox (1957), pp. 56–9. Hohler suggests a date of c.1130 on the basis that the depiction of Christ-as-pilgrim might be dependent on the Veneranda Dies sermon.
41. Matthew 10:1–42. These ideas of mendicancy and apostolic activity are, of course, more normally associated by scholars with the devotions of the Franciscans, for which see R. B. Brooke, The Coming of the Friars (1975).
42. V.D., p. 93; M.S.J., p. 28: Et apostoli inde peregrini fuere, quos sine peccunia et calciamenta Dominus misit. Quapropter peccunia nullo modo peregrinantibus deferre conceditur, nisi cum egenis eandem peccuniam expendant. Si absque peccunia illos misit, quid erit ex illis qui nunc cum auro et argento pergunt, satis edentes et bibentes, et nichil egenis impertiunt. Profecto non sunt veri peregrini, sed fures et latrones Dei … Sicut multitudini credencium olim erat cor unum et anima una, et nemo dicebat proprium, sed erant illis omnia communia, sic cunctis peregrinantibus debent esse omnia communia, cor unum et anima una (citation from Acts 4:32).
43. V.D., p. 93; M.S.J., p. 29: Si beatus Iacobus absque peccunia et calciamento per mundum peregrinus ivit, et tandem decollatus ad paradisum perrexit, cur ad eum peregrini diversis gazis refecti, nichil egenis erogantes tendunt?
44. Hohler, pp. 67–8, wrote that ‘It would be tedious to attempt to review the innumerable versions of the theme of St. James as a pilgrim sculptured or drawn when, in the later middle ages, this type had become canonical’.
45. V.D., p. 91; M.S.J., p. 23: Igitur via peregrinalis res est obtima sed angusta. Angusta enim est via que ducit hominem ad vitam, lata et spaciosa que ducit ad mortem. Peregrinalis via rectis est, defectio viciorum, mortificatio corporum, relevacio virtutum, remissio peccatorum, penitencia penitentum, iter iustorum, dilectio sanctorum, fides resurrectionis et remuneracionis beatorum, elongacio infernorum, propiciatio celorum. Cibaria pinguia extenuat, ventris ingluviem cohibet, libidinem domat, carnalia desideria que militant adversus animam comprimit, spiritum purificat, hominem ad contemplacionem provocat, sublimes humiliat, humiles beatificat, paupertatem diligit, censum quem observat avaricia odit, sed quem dispergit egenis largitas diligit, abstinentes et bene operantes remunerat, peccantes et avaros in se non liberat. The reference at the beginning of this passage was to the ‘Two Ways’ of which Christ had spoken in Matthew 7:13–14. For medieval understandings of this text, see G. B. Ladner, ‘Homo Viator: medieval ideas on alienation and order’, Speculum, xlii (1967), 240–1.
46. The most radical example of ‘devotional novelty’ was unquestionably that of the Order of the Temple. For contemporary attempts to legitimize the way of life of the Templars, see ‘Un document sur les débuts des Templiers’, ed. J. Leclercq, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, lii (1957), 81–91; Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae militiae’, Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq and others (8 vols., Rome, 1957–77), iii. 205–39. For a modern discussion, see M. Barber, The New Knighthood: a History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994). For the broader context, see B. Smalley, ‘Ecclesiastical attitudes to novelty, c.1100–c.1250’, in Church, Society and Politics, ed. D. Baker, Studies in Church History, xii (Oxford, 1975), 113–31.
47. The sermon is ascribed in the Liber Sancti Jacobi to Pope Calixtus II (r. 1119–24), but it seems extremely unlikely that this attribution is accurate. For a recent consideration of the ‘authorship’ of the Liber Sancti Jacobi, see The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela: a Critical Edition, ed. A. Stones, J. Krochalis, P. Gerson and A. Shaver-Crandell (2 vols., 1998), i. 15–27.
48. Chenu, passim.
49. See especially Guibert of Nogent, ‘Dei gesta per Francos’, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, (Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaeualis, cxxvii A, Turnhout, 1996), p. 87: instituit nostro tempore prelia sancta deus, ut ordo equestris et vulgus oberrans, qui vetustae paganitatis exemplo in mutuas versabantur cedes, novum repperirent salutis promerendae genus, ut nec funditus, electa, uti fieri assolet, monastica conversatione seu religiosa qualibet professione, seculum relinquere cogerentur, sed sub consueta licentia et habitu ex suo ipsorum officio dei aliquatenus gratiam consequerentur.
50. For a more detailed consideration of the themes discussed hereafter, see Purkis, Crusading Spirituality.
51. Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. and trans. R. M. T. Hill (Edinburgh, 1962) (hereafter Gesta Francorum), p. 1: Cum iam appropinquasset ille terminus quem dominus Iesus cotidie suis demonstrat fidelibus, specialiter in euangelio dicens: ‘Si quis uult post me uenire, abneget semetipsum et tollat crucem suam et sequatur me’, facta est igitur motio ualida per uniuersas Galliarum regiones, ut si aliquis Deum studiose puroque corde et mente sequi desideraret, atque post ipsum crucem fideliter baiulare uellet, non pigritaretur Sancti Sepulchri uiam celerius arripere (citation from Matthew 16:24).
52. Gesta Francorum, p. 2: Cumque iam hic sermo paulatim per uniuersas regiones ac Galliarum patrias coepisset crebrescere, Franci audientes talia protinus in dextra crucem suere scapula, dicentes sese Christi unanimiter sequi uestigia, quibus de manu erant redempti tartarea.
53. There are a handful of surviving references to ideas of Christo-mimesis in charters drawn up for crusaders before their departure and in letters written by crusaders on the march (see J. S. C. Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 62–3; see also Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 30–45, 57–8).
54. See especially J. S. C. Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986), p. 2 and passim, who argued that some contemporaries perceived the crusade army to be ‘a military monastery on the move’.
55. See, e.g., the description of Tancred’s response to the crusade message in Ralph of Caen, ‘Gesta Tancredi’, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens occidentaux, ed. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (5 vols., Paris, 1844–95) (hereafter R.H.C. Oc.), iii. 606: At postquam Urbani papae sententia universis Christianorum gentilia expugnaturis peccatorum omnium remissionem ascripsit, tunc demum quasi sopiti, prius experrecta est viri strenuitas, vires assumptae, oculi aperti, audacia geminata. Prius namque, ut praescriptum est, animus ejus in bivium secabatur, ambiguus utrius sequeretur vestigia, Evangelii, an mundi? Experientia vero armorum ad Christi obsequium revocata, supra credibile virum accendit militandi duplicata occasio.
56. Gilo of Paris, Historie Vie Hierosolimitane, ed. and trans. C. W. Grocock and J. E. Siberry (Oxford, 1997), pp. 68–71: Errat ut ille rotam qui per decliuia motam / Nititur ut teneat cum rota missa ruat, / Sic miser inmundum qui non uult perdere mundum / Errat; dum sequitur quod ruit, obruitur. / Ergo quisque moram, quia mundus habetur ad horam, / Pellat, et hoc querat quod mora nulla terat. / Detineat fundus nullum, domus optima, mundus, / Quin querat lucem suscipiendo crucem. / Christus processit, Christo uictoria cessit: / Crux quam sustinuit nostra medela fuit: / Ergo lege pari qui Christum uult imitari / Subdat ceruicem, suscipiatque uicem.
57. See especially H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Urban II’s preaching of the First Crusade’, History, lv (1970), 177–88; Riley-Smith, The First Crusade, pp. 13–30; P. J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), pp. 1–36; Riley-Smith, First Crusaders, pp. 53–66.
58. Robert of Rheims, ‘Historia Iherosolimitana’, in R.H.C. Oc., iii. 729–30: Quicumque ergo hujus sanctae peregrinationis animum habuerit, et Deo sponsionem inde fecerit, eique se libaturum hostiam vivam, sanctam et bene placentem devoverit, signum Dominicae Crucis in fronte sua sive in pectore praeferat. Qui vero inde voti compos regredi voluerit, inter spatulas retro ponat; tales quippe bifaria operatione complebunt illud Domini praeceptum quod ipse jubet per Evangelium: ‘Qui non bajulat crucem suam et venit post me, non est me dignus’ (citation from Matthew 10:38).
59. Baldric of Bourgueil, ‘Historia Jerosolimitana’, in R.H.C. Oc., iv. 16: Digno itaque exercitui Dei invento primicerio praebuit assensum multitudo multa nobilium; et statim omnes in vestibus superamictis consuerunt sanctae Crucis vexillum. Sic etenim papa praeceperat; et ituris hoc signum facere complacuerat: quippe praedicaverat summus pontifex Dominum dixisse sequacibus suis:‘“Si quis non bajulat crucem suam et venit post me, non potest esse meus discipulus.”Iccirco, inquit, debetis vobis crucem coaptare vestris in vestibus, quatinus et ex hoc tutiores incedatis, et his qui viderint et exemplum et incitamentum suggeratis’ (citation from Luke 14:27).
60. C. Erdmann, The Origin of the Idea of Crusade, trans. M. W. Baldwin and W. Goffart (Princeton, N.J., 1977), p. 345, wrote that the crusaders’ adoption of the sign of the cross was ‘unquestionably an innovation’.
61. See Riley-Smith, The First Crusade, p. 114, who noted that ‘northern Europeans arriving in France on their way to the East and unable to make themselves understood would make the sign of the cross with their hands to signify that they were crusaders’.
62. Innocent III, ‘Opera omnia’, in Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (221 vols., Paris, 1844–1903), ccxv, col. 1340: Tu enim crucem mollem suscipies et suavem, ille asperam subivit et duram: tu eam in vestis deferes superficie, ille in carnis pertulit veritate; tu ipsam assues tibi lineis filis aut sericis, ille in ea confixus est ferreis clavis et duris (cited in J. S. C. Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an act of love’, History, lxv (1980), 180).
63. Ekkehard of Aura, ‘Hierosolymita’, in R.H.C. Oc., v. 19.
64. Guibert of Nogent, p. 117.
65. Ekkehard of Aura, p. 39.
66. Matthew 27:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26.
67. For a more detailed discussion, see W. J. Purkis, ‘Stigmata on the First Crusade’, in Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church, ed. K. Cooper and J. Gregory, Studies in Church History, xli (Woodbridge, 2005), 99–108.
68. Guibert of Nogent, p. 197: Emulationem quippe dei habuerat, sed non secundum scientiam prorsus id egerat.
69. See, e.g., Baldric of Bourgueil, p. 21; Guibert of Nogent, p. 118; Ralph of Caen, pp. 678, 681; Orderic Vitalis, v. 36.70 See, e.g., Ekkehard of Aura, p. 39; Gesta Francorum, p. 1; Gilo of Paris, p. 52; Orderic Vitalis, v. 26.
70. See, e.g., Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1901) (hereafter Kreuzzugsbriefe), p. 164; Gesta Francorum, p. 7.
71. Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Epistolae’, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, viii. 379–80.
72. Psalm 131:7. For the appearance of this text in First Crusade narratives, see, e.g., Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Heidelberg, 1913), pp. 162, 331.
73. Kreuzzugsbriefe, p. 148: uenite ergo, oramus, militatum in militia Domini ad eundem locum, in quo Dominus militauit, in quo Christus passus est pro nobis, relinquens uobis exemplum, ut sequamini uestigia eius.
74. Orderic Vitalis, v. 168–9: In nomine Domini nostri Ihesu Christi qui sexta feria hic passus est arma sumamus, et insigniter urbem aggredientes Domini sepulchrum hodie adeamus.
75. For an introduction to the issues surrounding the martyrdom of first crusaders, and references to the broader historiography, see now N. Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Oxford, 2006), pp. 41–2.
76. Baldric of Bourgueil, p. 15: Pulchrum sit vobis mori in illa civitate pro Christo, in qua Christus pro vobis mortuus est.
77. Baldric of Bourgueil, p. 15. On the use of this text by crusade propagandists, see especially Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an act of love’.
78. For the context, see G. Constable, ‘Opposition to pilgrimage in the middle ages’, Studia Gratiana, xix (1976), 123–46; G. Constable, ‘Monachisme et pèlerinage au moyen âge’, Revue historique, cclviii (1977), 3–27; A. Jotischky, The Perfection of Solitude: Hermits and Monks in the Crusader States (University Park, Pa., 1995), pp. 1–16.
79. Geoffrey Grossus, ‘Vita Bernardi Tironiensis’, in Patrologia Latina, clxxii, col. 1378. For a full discussion, see Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 12–22, 27–9.
80. ‘Papsturkunden in Florenz’, ed. W. Wiederhold, Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Götingen, Phil.-hist. Kl. (1901), pp. 313–14.
81. For Bernard’s role in the preaching of the Second Crusade, see now J. P. Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. 61–98.
82. Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Epistolae’, viii. 511–12: Quid mundi gloriam requiris, qui in domo Dei tui abiectus esse elegisti? Quid ad te regionum circuitus, qui in solitudine vitam ducere professus es? Quid crucem vestibus assuis, qui hanc corde tuo baiulare non cessas, si religionem conservas?
83. Brooke, ‘Monk and canon’, p. 109.
84. Constable, Reformation, p. 125.
85. The question of whether one form of religious life might be regarded as melior than another was considered by Hugh Peccator in his discussion of the Templars (c.1129) (see ‘Un document sur les débuts des Templiers’, pp. 88–9). For the context, see also C. W. Bynum, ‘Did the twelfth century discover the individual?’, in C. W. Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1982), pp. 82–109.

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Contribution (65-85) from European Religious Cultures: Essays Offered to Christopher Brooke on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, edited by Miri Rubin (University of London, 08.05.2020), published by OAPEN under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.