Crusade Preaching and the Ideal Crusader is an illuminating study of thirty-six model sermons and two crusade preaching manuals composed in French, English, and Italian between 1216 and 1277. These were “didactic texts” whose purpose was “to inform the preachers utilizing them of different aspects of the crusade movement and to offer help for the crusade preachers in the construction of sermons” (279). Tamminen is interested in identifying the qualities and characteristics that defined ideal or “true” crusaders (veri crucesignati) in the eyes of the crusading movement's chief ecclesiastical ideologists, as well as what rhetorical strategies were used not only to encourage individuals to take the cross but also to guide those who had already taken it in the direction of “true crusading.”
The model sermons and preaching manuals examined by Tamminen were produced by just eight authors, all of whom were connected in some way with the University of Paris, as well as with the pastoral reform movement of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Consequently, the texts in question are an excellent window onto the thinking of a small but highly influential set of ecclesiastics during the thirteenth century, a period during which the crusading phenomenon is typically said to have reached maturity in terms of its ideology. Indeed, what we see here is crusading both as the papal monarchy saw it and as modern crusades scholars in the “pluralist” mode have come to define it. It is a view of crusading that emphasizes papal authority, vow taking, and the plenary indulgence rather than a specific enemy (i.e., Muslims) or destination (i.e., the Holy Land) as essential for defining a crusade. Thus, it is unsurprising that a quarter of the thirty-six model sermons investigated by Tamminen were intended for preaching against targets other than Muslims in the eastern Mediterranean (Egypt in addition to Syria) in immediate defense of the Holy Land. There are sermons preaching the cross against heretics, against Mongols, and against the Muslims of Lucera as part of the papal struggle with the Hohenstaufen.
Tamminen presents his aims, sources, and methods in chapter 1 (“Introduction”). Chapter 2 (“The Crusader and the Bible”) lays out how Old Testament figures—patriarchs, prophets, and kings—were deployed as models for the ideal crusader. Joshua is important, Judah Maccabee is commonly invoked, and Moses and David are ubiquitous. Chapter 3 (“The Crusader and God”) ranges widely but returns again and again to the conceptual and ethical underpinnings of crusading. The crusade ideologists insisted on right intention, humility, and a penitent frame of mind from their crusaders. Indeed, “becoming an ideal crusader involved a complete transformation from sinner to true servant of Christ”: “the inner composition of the crusader's mind” was paramount (281). The crusade ideologists saw challenges and obstacles to this kind of true crusading everywhere, and it is primarily to these that Tamminen turns in chapter 4 (“The Crusader and the World”). Excessive attachment to wives, children, and friends could undermine the crusader's devotion to God no less than poverty could practically limit the crusader. Similarly, greed and quarrelsomeness with fellow crusaders would stand in the way of the spiritual reform and total commitment that “true crusading” demanded.
The ecclesiastical minds behind the model sermons and preaching handbooks in this study sought to define—control, really—what made a crusader “ideal” and the act of crusading “true.” Even so, there was considerable room for choice and agency among individual preachers with respect to how they might introduce those ideals to their audiences. Tamminen identifies three kinds of model sermons—extended, plain, and abbreviated—that could be adapted to suit different contexts, while the preaching manuals were stocked with far more material than could ever be deployed in a single sermon. Hence, it fell to the individual preacher to know his audience and draw from a fund of sanctioned material that he believed would be situationally appropriate and compelling.
A few typographical and editorial issues crop up. One prominent scholar of crusade preaching is incorrectly cited as “Christopher” T. Maier in the abbreviations page, but correctly as “Christoph” (as his name appears in his own publications) subsequently in the notes, bibliography, and index. Also, there seems to be a problem with the appendices, of which there are five. Each of these is dedicated to the model sermons and/or preaching manuals of one of the eight authors dealt with in the book. These five appendices are in fact very useful, laying out the various manuscripts and editions used by Tamminen for each author's texts. The problem is that eight appendices were clearly intended: notes in chapter 1 refer to appendices 6, 7, and 8, which do not exist. Probably these were meant to cover the sermons of Humbert de Romans, Federico Visconti, and Guibert de Tournai, as appendices 1–5 cover the anonymous author of one preaching manual, Philippe le Chancelier, Jaques de Vitry, Roger of Salisbury, and Eudes de Châteauroux.
These issues notwithstanding, Crusade Preaching and the Ideal Crusader is a learned and valuable study. Overall, it is well researched, well written, and amply footnoted. While its claims and conclusions are not necessarily revolutionary—that crusade ideologists wanted a complete spiritual transformation from their crusaders, not just an army—Tamminen's study is admirable for its breadth and detail, and it gives a very clear picture of what an elite circle of scholastics and mendicants tried to communicate to the wider world of preachers and crusaders in the thirteenth century. Consequently, modern scholars of various constituencies—specialists of the crusades, of the high medieval church, and of the history of preaching, inter alia—will find Crusade Preaching and the Ideal Crusader well worth their time.
