Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

In 1215, Pope Innocent III summoned the largest religious council
held up to that point in the Western world for the purpose of reforming the
Church and organizing a crusade to save the Holy Land—a crusade that
was launched in 1218. As a result of Pope Innocent’s efforts, the papal government
imposed norms of behavior on the crusading movement, including
such areas as finance, military organization, and religious care for soldiers.
In addition, Pope Innocent III and his successors began to launch “political
crusades” against their Christian opponents in Europe. The combination of
these two factors led to a breakdown in the distinctions between crusading
and profane warfare.
The most obvious example of this breakdown was the granting of indulgences
to soldiers who participated in wars that by contemporary standards
had all the attributes of profane conflicts. During the late 1220s and
early 1230s the bishops of Utrecht consistently utilized the promise of remission
of sins as a tool for recruiting soldiers to serve in a war of aggression
against their neighbors. Their recruits were very eager to accept promises
of heavenly reward and guarantees of salvation in return for fighting
against the temporal enemies of Utrecht. The author of the Deeds of the
Bishops of Utrecht recorded that Frisian troops received their indulgences
from Bishop Willibrand of Utrecht with great reverence and devotion for
their spiritual father.
A further consequence of the deterioration of the boundaries between
holy and profane warfare was the effort by secular rulers to have their military
campaigns declared to be crusades. Papal crusades against Christian
princes, including Emperor Frederick II, helped to eliminate the former
standards that had constrained the targets of crusade campaigns. Now
Christian princes could appeal to the pope and obtain moral justification
for their campaigns, which not only permitted extensive taxation of the
Church but also offered a significant bundle of religious benefits to their
soldiers. Count Charles of Anjou, the brother of King Louis IX of France,
used this system to exact enormous concessions from both the pope and the
French Church in support of his campaign against the papacy’s traditional
Staufen enemies in southern Italy. Count Charles refused to go to war unless
Pope Urban IV declared his campaign to be a crusade, with all of the
spiritual benefits that accrued to such an undertaking. His men received
full indulgences for their services. In addition, the pope issued order to both
the Dominican and Franciscan orders that they were to send brothers to
serve as chaplains for the French troops.
The High Middle Ages
While the papal government’s efforts to control the crusading movement
helped to dissolve the boundaries between holy and profane warfare, the
Religion and Spiritual Development: Ancient Mediterranean and Medieval West 453