What is the difference between a crusade and a pilgrimage

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Lunch participants provide their own to p. It was only during the 13th century, possibly from the time of the Fourth Crusade, which began in , that the term "crucesignatus" is used to describe the Crusader knights. In addition, both the pilgrims and Crusaders swore the same oath to God and both wore a visible cross to show their special status, given to them by the church. Pope Urban's speech calling on knights to form armies and defend the sacred Christian sites in Palestine from the Seljuk invaders suggests that Crusaders would receive the same spiritual benefits as pilgrims.

The Pope was calling for an armed war, which would be costly for the knights, so he promised them absolution from sin and eternal glory if they reclaimed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which they believed contained Christ's tomb. Although there appears to be many similarities between pilgrimages and Crusades, there is one significant difference: pilgrims were supposed to be unarmed and not take part in violence while on the pilgrimage.

By contrast, the Crusades were a series of military campaigns in which the Crusaders' goal was salvation through warfare. And that was the medieval experience of religion — it was a very physical thing. They saw the buildings that soared to the heavens and drew their eyes upwards, they looked at the paintings in the churches, they touched relics, and in the ultimate expression of devotion, they went on pilgrimage.

From the eleventh century onwards, there was a growing middle class in Europe. They spent a large part of their increasing income on expressing their devotion, and a big part of that was religious tourism, or pilgrimage. The big three were a scallop shell from the shrine of St James of Compostella in Spain, a set of keys from Rome, and a palm leaf from Jerusalem.

Source: Wikipedia. Pilgrimage is the single most important influence on the origin and development of crusade. In fact, without the history of pilgrimage in Western Europe, it is possible the First Crusade would never have happened. Later, Christians who stayed in the East managed to live relatively peacefully alongside Muslims. However, they had a constant need for military reinforcements and the best way to attract these from the West was to appeal to religious consciences.

Davis, p. It was also largely religion that caused the divisions between Western and Eastern Christians, exacerbating the situation. Ultimately, it was partially the link between crusade and pilgrimage that undermined crusade at the end of the thirteenth century. Byzantine Alexios Komnenos I, from a Greek manuscript. Pope Urban II had something much more modest in mind than what eventuated when he preached what became the First Crusade.

Riley-Smith, p. His idea was to create a papal army from those knights. However, he and previous popes had previously had only limited success in recruiting milites san Petri , so Urban needed another motivation when he approached them.

He struck on pilgrimage. In recent years, there had been a vast growth in pilgrimage in itself, and as a way to get physically closer to more relics due in part to the growing piety that had arisen as part of the Reform Movement within Catholicism. In particular, the numbers going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the centre of the Christian world and a relic itself, had grown markedly over the previous century.

Webb, MEP, p. There was also still much credence in the theory that pretty much the only people who would make it to heaven were monks. Urban though, as a product of the French nobility himself, knew how to appeal to his people. When he preached what became the First Crusade at Clermont in , he called for an armed pilgrimage, with the significant sweetener of a plenary indulgence.

Here was a way the militarized French nobility could serve God without completely humbling themselves in the way penitential pilgrims should, or abandoning their weapons. They could achieve salvation by being themselves. This could not help but appeal to significant numbers of them. What Urban appears not to have envisaged was that his call to arms would be taken up by men and women from all levels of society, and this was largely due to the part pilgrimage played in the lives of all western European Christians.

He had started something that he was unable to stop. They believed the world was in decline, they were living in the Biblical Last Age, and the End of the World was nigh. Flanagan, p. Emperor Komnenos was both scared and angry by the crusaders his so-called ally had sent him; they were not what he wanted.

They were pillaging his lands and raping and murdering his people long before they even arrived at his capital, secure in the knowledge that they were on a fast track to heaven if anything happened to them. If they felt guilty in the meantime, there were many religious attached to the crusade ready to hear their confessions and bless them afresh.

Crusaders were simply armed pilgrims, as opposed to unarmed pilgrims, and to contemporaries it was only their arms that distinguished them from other peregrini. All aspects of pilgrimage — the vow, indulgence, symbolism, family tradition, reasons for participation, and who took part — were virtually the same in the sub-group of crusaders as they were for all pilgrims. The fact that contemporaries saw little difference between crusaders and other pilgrims meant the development of many aspects of crusade are mirrored in the development of pilgrimage as a whole.

There were also several events that kept crusade aligned with pilgrimage. For example, the outstanding success of the First Crusade was inexplicable to people who had little idea of what was going on politically in the Muslim world at the time.

Their seemingly impossible victory was from God — he approved of what they were doing and had given them the victory. They got lucky. She was famous for annoying her travelling companions with her constant crying out loud, moaning and writhing on the ground when communing with Jesus. Some tried to get her left behind at several stops while others admired her devotion. She wrote a book about her travels, which is recognized as the first autobiography in English. Travel books were usually accounts of crusades or other pilgrimages, both personal and second-hand.

Shinners, p. From the philological evidence it is also possible to make an assumption that contemporaries saw little difference between crusaders and other pilgrims, and that it was the religious aspects of crusade that most appealed. Words, phrases and symbolism conventionally related to monasticism, very quickly became part of the vocabulary used in crusade writings. On the other hand, the failure of a separate term to differentiate crusaders from other pilgrims to be established until many generations of them had been fighting in the Holy Land and elsewhere is perhaps the strongest indication that contemporaries considered the differences between them to be negligible.

Urban II had directed crusaders to sew a cross on their clothing as a sign of their vow. However, it was not until the late twelfth-century that the term crucesignatus was used with any regularity for crusaders, and in the thirteenth century, crusaders to the Baltic were still being called peregrini.