¶ Papal Call and Crusader Enthusiasm
Alright, recently Dr. Z and I sat down and we talked about why The episode is called Why People Went on Crusade, but one of our members over on Reddit He pointed out that it really should have been called Project. Genius time. Tank behind a lot of this. Though there was also a good And I'm gonna give you a sample of the episode, and spoilers, it is going to involve a goose. And these would be amazing events.
where we know that the ones where the Pope was present, where he would start oh we talked about how church at this point was like a processionary thing. Like he rarely went into the church. The church would sort of process through the streets. He would process up to wherever was needed to be dedicated, whatever it was.
wearing his tiara. And that is their official term. I'm not making this up to be like degrading or whatever. It's called a tiara. It's a big white cone. Um to me it looks like the crown of like upper Egypt. And it's got like gold and stuff all around it. Like a big old fabric egg.
Yeah, but it's one of these hat wearing ceremonies we've been talking about in the show where you wear your hat, everyone goes, Ooh, look at that hat and he walks up the road, dedicates whatever It is shocking how much of medieval diplomacy and like politics centers around hat wear. Really in the their hats back then. I th I guess all right. We're into some things in our culture. That's you know, that's theirs. But he'd give the speech at the end, and everyone would be whipped up.
And I think this is probably a really good percentage of the people like when we're talking about how did the actual knights get themselves in this mess. Right. Um, and I think a lot of it was this process specifically. Not even social pressure,'cause at that point I'm not even sure if it's pressure. It's like a sporting event that everyone's into. It
like a really good church sermon. It's if you see or have been in a event where everyone's on the same page and getting whipped up and you are spontaneously like just in that moment. It's a whole vibe, right? You're vibing with the crowd and the crowd keeps vibing and suddenly the vibes are just so high that you are spontaneously being like, Yes, I am taking the cross. Give me the cross right now. Except you did it in front of the Pope.
And the thing is, is even on a normal pilgrimage, if you say you're going to Jerusalem, you have to. The only person who can excuse you from going to Jerusalem is the Pope. And you just told the Pope, I'm going. I'm your man. I'll bring my sword. I'll bring my dudes swords. I'm gonna bring my dudes and we're all gonna bring our swords and we're going to Jerusalem for you and Jesus. You're not taking that back. You can't.
And what's great and what's great about this whole oath thing is they've already got the crosses cut out. They've got'em cut out for you. They will hand it to you and you will pin it to your chest right there. And you're not supposed to take it off until you've gone to Jerusalem and and liberated it. Oh man, the uh the buyer's remorse that that must have been happening among some of these
You gotta imagine, especially after what happened next, which is you have to sell all your shit because it's expensive. And this is the other thing where it's like it's not colonialism as we imagined, you know, uh like It's just not the colonialism that happened in the nineteenth century. It's not people going, I don't have anything. I'm gonna go over there so I have something. Right. These are people who have things and they sell all of it and go liberate the church for Jesus.
¶ Devotion, Harsh Realities, Goose Cult
It's just different. Uh again, not good, different. And they made sure that that was the case because again, you in order for the penitential thing to work, you had to go for devotion alone. That was a requirement set by the Pope. He's in charge of these things. Right. You cannot go hoping to get rid of any part of your heart heart to benefit.
f personally. And there's a lot of writing about suspicion. This or that person seems to be like looking to make money or something. You got that with pilgrimages too, normal ones. you really have to be in the right state of mind. Or you'll be socially punished if anyone cottons on and you'll definitely be spiritually punished and punished. God's going to catch on. Right. So is this part of what drove that split during the first crusade where I believe it was the southern front?
They had their own prophet who was like making a lot of prophecies that just happened to benefit that crew and the other the other crew were like, yo, what's up with this guy? That was on the last leg of the crusade. They were using l these languages, but I think I ha you have to kind of take into account that these guys had been on the road for years. and had really seen some shit and were all starting to have really spiritual experiences.
And we're all like at each other's throats and starving. So when that starts streff going like Fair enough. That like it's it's a yes and. Like once you get to the actual crusade, this is all before the crusade, when things m made sense, if you could say it like that. Once you got on the crusade, you had shit like this woman who was like who had a pet goose.
Who said, The Holy Ghost is in my pet goose? And then there's a bunch of people being like, Yes, it is. And she had her whole uh a cult around this goose. Uh who in it lived the Holy Spirit and they were taking it down to Jerusalem. Are we sure it's the Holy Spirit and not Zeus?'Cause that's kind of a Zeus move. You know, he would like to say he only does swans. This is a goose. And people are like, Yes, this is the Holy Spirit Goose. Listen to his honking. Can you not hear the voice of Christ?
And this this little like cult of the goose was influential as they were moving down until the ghost died and then it got very confusing for everybody. That is to say, once we're on the road to Jerusalem, things get very weird. We're still talking about why did people want to go? They haven't started and been like, Oh my god, what did I do to myself? I can't believe you held back the cult of the goose.
I didn't mean to. I'm kind of surprised I did too. Um but that is to say, there's a lot of they're wild. The crusades. we're wild and there's gonna be more, so we're gonna we're gonna go back. But yeah, cult of the goose. But this we're he we're here we're still in ten ninety five, ten ninety six. People are getting ready. Things make sense.
¶ Social Pressure and Funding Crusades
You just screamed to the Pope, I'll take the cross. And now you're wearing the cross.
now there is really that like a classic social movement happening, right?'Cause people are seeing people walking around with a cross. There are there the news is spreading not just through this event, but obviously through letters and word And so there are people who are not at these events who do take the cross, who say, All right, I'm going Was there social pressure if you don't take the cross, sort of like during the world wars where like if you didn't go, people would not be kind to you.
Yeah. And I mean that's why we had the immediate echo uh crusade right after the first crusade. That was like what was it called the The Crusade of the Faint Hearted. Yeah. Love the Crusade of the Faint Hearted. And that was uh made up both of people who didn't pledge the first time and also some people who pledged and like didn't end like end up getting on the road in time or whatever or chickened out. Not a happy bun.
So yeah, there was a lot of social pressure. Um and then there are just people who who seem to just be recruited or a lot of them were this people who were networked. that network of the fideles who were like, All right, it's time'cause they'd been now talking about it for as we know, decades. Yeah. They're ready for it. And so these people also
go and what's motivating them? So okay, you weren't just caught up in the like moment of the crowd. Why do you go? A lot of it seems to be this penitential thing. And we have that because we have their documents. Part of the problem here is that we have a d document issue where
documents that are in the church are the ones that uh that survive. So it looks like everything, but it's probably not. But we do know churches hold a lot of cash. So they would have been the ones to like be on hand to sort of bankroll These crusaders'cause no one was paying you. You didn't sign up and get a fifty thousand dollar bonus if you stayed for five years. Um so long as you're catching seven saracens a day or whatever. Um No, you had to get your own equipment and your own supplies.
And that meant you were going to somewhere who had enough money to like bankroll that, right? Right. And so we have the documents of those exchanges, of churches, monasteries, whatever, saying, Hey, we're giving you this kind of money, here's the deal. And there were various ways that they would make deals to get the money. Some were just like loans, like hey, you have this land or hey, we just buy this land off of me. Um and these deals get really complex.
Um, another thing that they were doing was they would go to churches that they were they had been beefing with. Or like monasteries or'cause you know these guys were like, Whose land is it? Is it the churches? It's mine, is is the churches, it's mine? This is happening all over the place. And so if a monastery was on some land that some Lord had decided was theirs, they would beef. And which means that they would go to like their villages and burn their villages. As Christ would have liked.
Exactly, as we know. So what we have are these documents that are amazing where it's this lord writing to this monastery or whatever that they'd been beefing with. And saying I'm so sorry. I have been just awful to you and to the villages around you. And I just like I beat so many people up and I burnt. all of the villages in this year and then the year after that I burned this village and I'm just so sorry. I'm quitting so that you can give me the money to go on crusade.
Okay, there's a word for that. And it's not it's not pilgrimage. That's called extortion. It's called a renunciation, it was very common. That is absolutely racketeering. Um I it seems to be well no,'cause it w this was not there was not enough time for them to start a beef to do it. Sure, but like they already were doing the crimes and they're like, I'll stop doing the crimes if you pay me. That's extortion.
It does seem to be a little astored, right? But the monks to their credit made sure that they got these really flowery, detailed um explanations of everything that they did wrong before they did. Alright, I hope you enjoyed that, and if you'd like to hear more about So a little more about the goose. Then sign up for membership over at the British History.