According to the title and, more fully, the Introduction of the book under review, this study is a history of the “crusade-specific papal protection privilege” in the Middle Ages (2–14). As the introduction explains, the author wishes to show that Pope Urban II may have been drawing on themes articulated in the Peace of God and the Truce of God and on the long experience and discussion of pilgrimage. Nevertheless, the extension of previous promises of protection to the families and property of those receiving the privilege was the pope's innovation. The extension of the privilege beyond families to the polities of those aristocrats, including kings, who ruled over them was the next step.

How important was the pope's contribution to the lived experience of crusaders and their kin and dependents? In the second sentence of the introduction, the crusade-specific papal protection privilege is set in the context of what “motivated the crusaders.” If it was a motivator, it was very important, indeed. Later in the study, however, it becomes clear that the author is not really seeing this privilege as a motivator or even, despite the claim, “as an added attraction for taking the cross” (29). Rather, she concedes that, “at the very least [it] removed one barrier” (41) from taking the cross, fear of attacks on family and domain property while abroad. This in itself, if the verb “removed” is accurate, could be very significant (on which, more below).

After sketching in more detail in chapter 1 the intellectual and practical background of the papal privilege in the Peace Movement and pilgrimage, the author undertakes a series of thematic case studies. She bases these on a wide array of published sources, almost all, not surprisingly, on the upper classes, pertaining to the counties of Flanders and Champagne and to the lands ruled directly by the king of France. There are occasional remarks, for the sake of comparison, on the empire and England. The underlying questions concern how important the privilege was in the mental universe of the crusaders and whether the granting of the protection worked to deter attacks on crusaders’ possessions, including the large polities that elite crusaders ruled.

To answer these questions, the author talks about the nature of regencies as well as the governance of estates and polities during crusaders’ absences. She compares instances of regencies generated by other factors, like inheritance by minors, with crusade regencies. Her conclusions, as her introduction already indicated, are straightforward and unequivocal. The privilege was psychologically reassuring to those who established regencies and exercised them. She implies that it had significant practical value as well. When those on whom it was bestowed invoked it, it could or might work to deter predation on home properties. She acknowledges, however, that it fell short of the highest hopes. Witness the case of Richard I of England. I would say that more work still needs to be done to clarify the relative successes/failures of the protection privilege, although the author's findings constitute a useful intervention.

In discussing regencies, the author often moves away from the central theme and indulges in extended remarks on, for example, female regencies, including the exercise of military authority by women rulers and the long-term effect such exercises of power had on their lives. Along the way in the study, the author also challenges the level of importance of Pope Innocent III in the development of crusader privileges. She does so in order to elevate the contribution of one of his twelfth-century predecessors, Pope Eugenius III, and to give greater due to the achievements of Innocent's successor, Pope Honorius III (see, especially, 97–102). In my opinion, Pope Innocent III substantially survives the effort at revisionism, even if he may have been a little less or less comprehensively original than a few scholars and popularizers have occasionally made him out to be.

The prose in this study is workmanlike. On occasion, points, like that on female military lordship (42–43 n. 1; 46–47 n. 18, 148 n. 66, and 206 n. 6), are repetitiously made. However, the book's overall clarity is a virtue, and future scholars of the subject will need to engage its various arguments.