In this lucid and measured monograph, William Purkis seeks to define a distinctive crusade spirituality in the near century between the First and Third Crusades. As a member of what has recently been described as the “idealist” school of crusade historians, Dr. Purkis bases his approach on two allied assumptions: that crusaders were primarily motivated by religious impulses and that these laymen's motives can be recovered from a study of the literary, historical, administrative, and academic apologetics of clerical observers and commentators. The preaching and propaganda surrounding the First Crusade, and, it is argued, the lay response, were characterized by an innovative emphasis on Christo-mimesis, imitatio Christi, and on crusaders following the vita apostolica, both central themes of concurrent movements of church, especially monastic and papal, reform. Tangible and intellectually accessible shape was lent to these ideals by the centrality of the Jerusalem pilgrimage and the implications of adopting the cross in following Christ (the injunction in Matthew 16:24). These elements distinguished Urban II's crusade from previous and other contemporary penitential wars and battles against infidels and lent an unmistakable coherence to this new activity. However, the legacy of the First Crusade did not survive unaltered. While the ingredient of pilgrimage remained essential, the aspect of the vita apostolica faded. By the 1140s and the preaching of the Second Crusade, a wholly different spiritual slant was introduced by the Cistercians Bernard of Clairvaux and his pupil Eugenius III that contradicted the idea that a temporary lay commitment to the way of the cross implied full, that is, spiritual Christo-mimesis. That, so Purkis interestingly argues, Bernard reserved for the new religious order, the Templars. Crusading, in Bernardine thought, earned participants the chance of salvation but not through imitatio Christi, the emphasis in preaching for the Second Crusade resting more on the deeds of ancestors and personal spiritual opportunity as well as pilgrimage. In that sense, crusading from the 1140s to 1180s (such of it as there was, mainly teased out from reactive papal rhetoric) shed much of its original monastic flavor. The study is completed, possibly somewhat awkwardly, by a sort of extended two-chapter case study or appendix on crusade spirituality in Iberia in which Purkis follows recent trends in seeing no firm evidence of crusade institutions (notably pilgrimage as well as Jerusalem indulgences) being applied to wars with Muslims until the 1120s. By the 1140s, even this influence had been transformed from association with the Holy Land, with Iberia seen as a fresh route east, to more localized formulations of Iberian crusading as an end in itself, a progression associated with the developing military cult of St. James.

This is a thoughtful, useful, and well-ordered discussion that fits into a number of current debates on the nature of crusading and its relation with changes in western European spirituality. Purkis's close analysis of a number of texts, some unfamiliar, will be welcomed. His scheme allows new insights into details such as the role of crusade stigmata, the authenticity of the “crusade” letter of Sergius IV, some of the texts in the mid-twelfth century Liber Sancti Jacobi, and the ideological elements in the campaigns in the Balearic Islands. Of wider interest will be the comments on the Cistercian effort to shift the emphasis within crusade propaganda, if not ideology, and the contrast between the theology of crusading and the Templars. However, in the end, although persuasively put, some doubts may persist. The idea that the First Crusaders were consciously abandoning home and family to follow Christ ignores the large numbers of wives and children that a wide variety of sources attest went on the expedition. Imitatio Christi was conspicuous by its absence from Urban II's crusade letters, possibly the most direct, authentic evidence of his thought from 1095–1099. Similarly, the language of pilgrimage is less prevalent in the earliest pieces of evidence for the First Crusade (again, see Urban's letters) than Purkis suggests. The depiction of crusading as pilgrimage fails to consider some difficulties. If the crusade was distinctive because it was specifically a pilgrimage war, not just a holy or penitential war to Jerusalem, why were the ceremonies of taking the cross and crusaders adopting the symbols of pilgrimage repeatedly kept separate (as by Louis VII in 1147, or Frederick Barbarossa in 1188/9, and Richard I 1187/90 and Philip II 1188/90)? This is not to say Purkis is misled, merely that it is not as clear-cut an alliance as he maintains. Of more concern perhaps is the view that most crusaders necessarily shared the ideas of the clergy. Was this true of the violent iuvenes or those whose thoughts left no trace in monastic charters because they did not borrow money from monasteries? For every pious crusade veteran such as Odo Arpin, returning to his monastery, was a Thomas of Marle or Raimbold Croton whose spirituality, judged by their actions, appears far less altered by their experiences in the east. The First Crusade in action and organization, as opposed to image, was not a monastery on the march. Were confraternities on crusade really a deliberate evocation of the unanimiter of the vita apostolica? Sources indicate that pragmatic reasons may have counted at least as heavily, and confraternities mirrored arrangements in lay society just as much as in religious communities. Some may regard Purkis's view of the spiritual imperatives and patterns as too rigid, mechanistic, and narrowly sourced. Here lies a basic interpretive issue. While Purkis admits (55) that his arguments can tend to the circular—clerical interpretation being used to confirm lay reality, which confirms clerical interpretation—his defense may not convince everyone. His historical approach appears constrained by a self-validating academic circle, as suggested by the names Jonathan Riley-Smith, Marcus Bull, Norman Housley, and Jonathan Phillips. At issue is not just the nature of the evident relation between clerical literary sources and the lay context, but also questions of how historians think medieval society, including crusading, actually worked and the extent to which it can be understood on the terms and through the dialogue of a self-conscious clerical intellectual elite. For all that, historians of the early crusades and of twelfth-century spirituality will benefit from Purkis's lively suggestions.