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Introduction Beasts of many kinds are attempting to destroy the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth, and their onset has so far succeeded against it that over no small area thorns have sprung up instead of vines and (with grief we report it!) the vines themselves are variously infected and diseased, and instead of the grape they bring forth the wild grape.Therefore we invoke the testimony of Him, who is a faithful witness in the Heavens, that of all the desires of our heart we long chiefly for two in this life, namely that we may work successfully to recover the Holy Land and to reform the Universal Church, both of which call for attention so immediate as to preclude further apathy or delay unless at the risk of great and serious danger.' Thus, in his letter of 1213 to the ecclesiastical officials of the province of Canterbury, did Pope Innocent I11 (1198-1216) depict the dangers to universal Christendom and the two most pressing tasks before it. To be sure, the first fifteen years of Innocent's pontificate had not neglected these problems, and the great Pope had sent thousands of letters concerning the threatened state of Christendom-letters which had begged, cajoled, entreated, and thundered against the enemies of the Church, of peace, and of right action. In 1 2 1 5and 1216Innocent was to take two major steps to achieve the goals which he desired most. In 1215he convened the Fourth Lateran Council, in which the work of earlier Church Councils toward the definition of dogma and law was completed and the reform of the Universal Church was, at least so it appeared , at last begun. At the end of the Council, Innocent took up his second task. He proclaimed the Fifth Crusade, which was to get underway in 1217,thereby, he hoped, bring1 .Text in C. R. Cheney and W. H. Semple, eds., Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III concerning England (1198-1216) (London, 1953), pp. 144- '45. x INTRODUCTION ing to completion his second great aim, the recovery of the Holy Land. By 1198 the crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem had been reduced to a few towns on the Syrian coast whose lords and clergy continued to implore military aid from their fellow Christians in western E ~ r o p e . ~ Jerusalem itself had fallen to the armies of Saladin in 1187, and the Third Crusade, which had proposed to regain it, ended in bickering and failure. Its leaders, the most powerful rulers in the West, had either died or returned to more pressing affairs at home. Frederick I Barbarossa, the Roman Emperor, had died before reaching the Holy Land. Richard I Lionheart, King of England, had been captured by the Duke of Austria while enroute home -in complete violation of his status as a Crusader-and held for an enormous ransom. King Philip I1 Augustus of France, having quarreled with Richard of England in the Holy Land, exploited Richard's captivity by encroaching upon the English king's possessions in France, thus continuing the drawnout military conflict between the rulers of France and England which had begun half a century earlier and would continue for many more years. The failure of the Third Crusade did not, however, dampen Christendom's crusading ardor . The Holy Land and the Christians in it remained in dire peril, and each pope after 1187 declared that the Crusade stood at the center of his duties as the leader of Christendom. Not only popes, but itinerant preachers, poets, and crusade propagandists continued to lament the distress of the Christians in "The Lands Beyond the Sea." Secular as well as spiritual leaders proposed new crusading efforts. The Emperor Henry VI, the son of Frederick Barbarossa, was himself preparing to launch a massive offensive in the East when he died unexpectedly in 1197.In the following year, at a tourna- .merit at Ecry in France, a number of lay barons spontaneously took up the Cross. 2. For the general history of Christendom and Crusade during this period, see Kenneth M. Setton, ed., A History of the Crusades; Vol. I, The First Hundred Years, M. W. Baldwin, ed., and Vol. 11, The Later Crusades, R. L. Wolfe and H. W. Hazard, eds. (reprintedition Madison, Wisc., 1969).See also Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Vol. 111, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (paper, New York, 1967),p p 3-236. [3.144.248.24] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 10...

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