56 Chrissis
and calamity [in the East], let us be moved by our country, our homes,
our children, our family, and our wives.97The fight was about self-preservation, not vaguely championing the faith in
some faraway lands.
Nevertheless, the core of the main arguments remained remarkably stable
to the end. Although it might have been very far from reach on practical terms,
the recovery of Jerusalem still formed an important part of the crusade rheto-
ric and proclamations against the Ottomans in the 15th and even the 16th cen-
turies. In 1451, Jean Germain, the envoy of the duke of Burgundy to Charles vii
of France, gave a central place to strengthening the Byzantine Empire in his
plan for a greater campaign which would first fight the Turks, and then reclaim
the Holy Land.98
Crusade Mechanisms
The series of organisational characteristics which are particular to the cru-
sade, and which we can call “crusade mechanisms”, include crusade preaching,
indulgences, funding, crusader privileges, and the commutation and redemp-
tion of vows (respectively the permission to fulfil one’s crusade vow in a differ-
ent campaign than the one initially undertaken, or to substitute an appropriate
monetary sum for personal service). Tracking when and how extensively those
were put in use at different times and places is a useful indication of the scope
and the importance given to various crusade ventures. They can provide
insights to the priorities of the papacy and other participating powers, as well
as to the response to the relevant calls.
Most of those mechanisms were introduced in Frankish Greece in the
early years after the conquest. The plenary crusade indulgence was granted
by Innocent iii already in 1205 for those who would come to assist the Latin
Empire.99 It is useful to contrast this to the fact that Innocent held back
throughout his pontificate from granting the full remission of sins for the simi-
lar expeditions that were carried out in the Baltic.100 In the case of Romania,
the link with the purported help to the Holy Land seems to have facilitated the
grant of the plenary indulgence, even though this help remained unfulfilled
and this argument quickly became little more than a justificatory topos of papal
97 Housley, Documents, no. 48, p. 149; see also idem, Later Crusades, p. 99.
98 See Housley, Documents, no. 46, pp. 141–42.
99 Die Register Innocenz’ iii, 8: nos. 70 (69), 131 (130).
100 Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, The Popes and the Baltic Crusades, 1147–1254 (Leiden, 2007),
p. 97.