The Impact of the Crusades 119
tHE pApACY, JEwS, ANd
tHIrtEENtH-CENtUrY CrUSAdES
As in the twelfth century, during the first half of the thirteenth century popes
authorized a number of crusades in Europe: crusades not against Muslims in the
Near East but against heretics and political enemies of the papal states much nearer
to home. Innocent III, Honorius III, gregory IX, and Innocent Iv all issued letters
authorizing and attempting to control these crusades. Of the surviving letters only
a very small percentage from the first half of the thirteenth century referred to
Jews.88 Of these, the number concerned with Jews in the specific context of cru-
sades, whether within Europe or to the Near East, was even smaller.89 Some, such
as those authorizing particular crusades, only mentioned them in passing, but
others, indicating disapproval of crusader violence, emphasized the particular
status of Jews as a settled population living in Christian Europe, albeit outside the
Christian faith.
The papacy’s call for the Fourth Crusade—the first of the thirteenth-century cru-
sades to the Near East—stemmed again from the desire to retake Jerusalem. Those
who had taken part in the Third had achieved a military victory in recovering Acre,
but the enterprise as a whole had been only a partial success; indeed the Muslim
world controlled by Saladin had benefitted most from it. According to contempor-
aries robert of Cleri and geoffrey of villehardouin, the main leaders of the new
crusade were Enrico dandalo, the doge of venice, Boniface of Montferrat, and
Baldwin IX of Flanders, aided by the particular involvement not only of the preacher,
Fulk of Neuilly, but also by the papal legates peter Capuano and Soffredo.90 In his
general crusading letters ‘post miserabile’ of 1198, ‘graves orientalis terrae’ of 1199,
and ‘Nisi nobis dictum’ of 1200 sent to all the clergy of Europe, Innocent III called
for the Fourth Crusade and issued very specific instructions regarding crusades and
Jewish usury.91 As we shall examine in Chapter Four, two of these, ‘post miserabile’—
which was later cited in titulus 10 of Book 5 of the Compilatio tertia as ‘per misera-
bilem’ and in Capitulum 12 of the Liber extra as ‘post miserabilem’—and ‘graves
orientalis terrae’, were especially aimed at controlling the treatment of Jews by the
clergy with regard to money-lending.92
Much to Innocent III’s chagrin and disgust, the crusaders, in debt to the
venetians who had organized the campaign, sacked first Zara on the dalmatian
Coast and then Constantinople, rather than attempting their original goal: the cap-
ture of Jerusalem. Indeed the intention of the subsequent Fifth Crusade, organized
88 Thirty-two of Innocent III, twenty-four of Honorius III, forty-six of gregory IX, and thirty-two
of Innocent Iv, according to Grayzel, Vol. 1. In Simonsohn the numbers are respectively: 29, 25, 49,
and 35.
89 See Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.1–83, passim for the exact number.
90 Jonathan philips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople (London, 2004), p.7.
91 Innocent III, ‘post miserabile(m) Hierosolymitanae’ (17/15 August 1198), Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.86;
Simonsohn, p.71; ‘graves orientalis terrae’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.98; Simonsohn, p.78; ‘Nisi nobis dictum’,
Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.98; Simonsohn, pp.78–9.
92 Innocent III, ‘post miserabile(m) Hierosolymitanae’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.86; Simonsohn, p.71;
‘g raves orientalis terrae’, Grayzel, Vol. 1, p.98; Simonsohn, p.78.