James of Vitry's Sermons to Pilgrims

As part of a session devoted to examining the relationship between pilgrimage and the crusades, I will be using the famous thirteenth-century crusade recruiter James of Vitry's sermons to pilgrims to illuminate how preachers sought to reconcile the ideals and practices of pilgrimage with participation in a military campaign and/or the crusades' home front. Despite noting James' recruiting activities and the fact that some of the themes in his pilgrim sermons are also present in his sermons to crusaders, Jean Longère and Debra Birch have both analyzed these sermons largely in the context of non-militaristic pilgrimage or pilgrimage within Europe. This is perhaps because the collection to which these sermons belong (the sermones ad status) was probably redacted into its final form during James' cardinalate (1229 1240) in Rome (a premier pilgrimage destination).¹ Yet I would argue that James' sermons to pilgrims contain sentiments and material which illuminate a relatively invaluable insight into a relatively little-researched area: how preachers played an invaluable role in crafting and maintaining the morale, identity, morals, and goals of crusading armies, in this instance, those of the Fifth Crusade (1213-1221).²

Innocent III and other Paris-educated reformers blamed the failure of earlier crusades on the sins and dissension of the inhabitants of the East and the West. The revitalization of all Christendom was therefore essential to the success of future crusades. James of Vitry had studied or worked with many of the ecclesiastics helping to organize the Fifth Crusade, including Oliver of Paderborn and Robert Courson. Many of these men attended the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and internalized Ad liberandam's mandate for recruiters to accompany those they signed with the cross, thereby guarding the army's moral purity and leading sinners to repentance through their prayers, living example and exhortations.³ James' celebrity as a crusade preacher appears to have led to his election as bishop of Acre, and he quickly attempted to prepare Palestine for the crusade army's arrival by embarking upon a reforming tour of the coastal cities, including the notorious port of Acre.⁴ James, Oliver, Robert and other reformers also accompanied the crusade army on its campaigns. They aided the legate Pelagius in using laws, confraternities, liturgy, preaching, portents and prophecies, the precedents of the Old Testament and First Crusade, the cult of relics and the glorification of pauperes to win the rank-and-file's and leaders' assent to the solutions they and Pelagius devised for the reform of the army, including military strategies and the problematic ebb and flow of recruits and supplies. Their bulletins to the pope and fellow crusade preachers in Europe impacted the public perception of the crusade and the organization of liturgy and recruiting there through campaign updates and appeals for money and reinforcements.⁵

While in the East, James and Oliver also produced histories meant to provide current and future crusaders and pilgrims with devotional and pragmatic depictions of the Holy Land's religious sites and geography, exemplary histories of earlier holy wars and crusades, and evaluations of various native peoples as either potential allies or sources of religious contamination.⁶ James' and Oliver's concept of the ideal crusader pilgrim was shaped by recent campaigns, but also histories of the First and other crusades. Both men and their collaborators insisted that only sustained peace-making, reform, and revivalism in the West and East would enable the success of a crusade. Their efforts resulted in the creation and sustenance of a home front marked by liturgies and processions which stressed the sacrificial imitation of Christ and the saints to encourage economic sacrifices rewarded by partial indulgences. They also extended the crusade vow to whomever wished to take it, thus transforming crusading and blurring the boundaries between crusading armies, the home front, and indeed other forms of religious devotion and enthusiasm.⁷

Although James of Vitry utilized materials and themes from throughout his career while compiling the final model version of his sermons to pilgrims, both of his sermons to pilgrims also contain themes known to be prominent during the Fifth Crusade...