From its beginnings in the eleventh century through its decline in the early modern period, the movement of Christian holy war known as the crusades was sustained by the enthusiasm and willing participation of the European military aristocracy. Despite this, historians have yet to explain the continuing value of crusading and the maintenance of the crusading frontier for the aristocracy. This article argues for a fundamental re-evaluation of the nature of crusading, as it was perceived and experienced by European elites. Rather than large-scale military expeditions with global geo-political objectives, smaller more frequent tours of the frontier world constituted the normative crusading experience for aristocrats. These noble sojourns allowed for the acquisition of cultural capital through controlled and staged performances and interaction with the elites, landscape, and fauna of the crusading East. The study of these independent crusading expeditions requires engagement with an altogether different body of source material than usually is consulted in crusade historiography and a different set of questions to be asked of these sources, which in turn leads us to consider a different range of behavior, including tournament-going, hunting, and courtly life, as constituting the typical aristocratic crusading experience. It was through these activities that visiting aristocrats acquired the precious cultural capital that defined their social status in a period of hardening class distinctions. While aristocracy maintained crusading, crusading maintained distinction, and hence the entire European regime of lordship itself.