4 - Gregory IX and the Crusades

Summary

Abstract

The pontificate of Gregory IX saw an astonishing expansion of the range of crusading activities, with multiple campaigns on many fronts annually against every perceived threat. Although not aiming to fulfil a programme, in some areas Gregory took the initiative, while in others he reacted to requests and opportunities. His policy of vow redemption, use of the friars in preaching a universal crusading propaganda, and attempts at enforcement of sermon attendance, met with mixed results, posed a host of problems, and had unintended consequences for the Late Medieval Church. But his influence on the history of the crusading movement cannot be questioned.

Keywords: Crusades, Vows, Teutonic Knights, Indulgences, Preaching

Gregory IX was at the centre of two great changes in crusading that took place in the thirteenth century. One had to do with the targets and reasons for crusades, the other with how they were recruited and financed. In the twelfth century, most crusading activity was focused on the Holy Land or the Iberian Peninsula. The Baltic was a fledgling theatre of operations. There were major campaigns, such as the Second and Third Crusades, but in general crusading remained an infrequent phenomenon. The beginning of the thirteenth century witnessed a massive expansion of crusading, with expeditions departing with greater frequency than ever before to new theatres of conflict against newly identified enemies of Latin Christianity. The two key figures in this expansion were Innocent III and Gregory IX.

Innocent opened up new fronts in southern Italy, where he preached a crusade against Markward of Anweiler in 1199; in the Languedoc, where he launched the Albigensian Crusades (1209–1229) against secular lords he accused of failing to eradicate heresy from the lands they ruled; and in the Latin Empire of Constantinople, the regime founded in the wake of the Fourth Crusade, which Innocent had originally recruited to aid the crusader states of Syria. Gregory intensified papal commitments in these arenas while adding several new ones of his own, preaching campaigns against the Drenther peasants in Utrecht; against Stedinger peasants in the lower Weser valley; against heretics in Germany; against the heterodox ecclesiastical establishment in Bosnia; against the pagan Cumans in Hungary; and against the Mongols in eastern Europe. All the while, he maintained traditional levels of papal support for crusading in the Holy Land and Iberia.