9 - The Barons’ Crusade, or the crusade of Thibaut de Champagne

Summary

Exhortation, separation and departure

In 1239 the treaty made between Frederick II and al-Kāmil in 1229 came to an end. Thibaut de Champagne, who in 1230 had first publicly declared his intention to go on crusade in anticipation of the end of the truce, became king of Navarre in 1234, and the crusade was preached at the end of that year. Preparations were complicated, and five years later, in the summer of 1239, Pope Gregory IX sent out agents to preach the crusade again, in both France and England. The emperor Frederick had been hoping to lead it but was prevented by events in Italy, and Thibaut was left in charge. By early summer he was ready to set sail, and he arrived at Acre on 1 September, where an army of around 1,000 knights assembled during the next few days. This period saw the production of a number of preaching songs, and also of songs of separation, in whose development Thibaut himself was particularly innovative.

Thibaut preceded his departure by presiding over the burning of more than 180 heretics at Mont-Aime in Champagne. According to Michael Lower, this powerfully bolstered both his finances and his public image as a penitential crusader. He himself contributed to the preaching of the crusade (RS 6):

Seignor, sachiez, qui or ne s'an ira

en cele terre ou Diex fu mors et vis

et qui la croiz 'outremer ne penra

a painnes mais ira en paradis.

Qui a en soi pitie ne remembrance,

au Haut Seignor doit querre sa vanjance

et delivrer sa terre et son pais. (vv. 1–7)

Lords, know this: whoever will not now go to that land where God died and rose again, and whoever will not take the cross to Outremer will find it hard ever to go to heaven. Whoever has pity and good remembrance in his heart must seek to avenge the Highest Lord and liberate his land and his country.

His composition draws on many of the motifs and arguments typical of crusade songs of exhortation: the hope of salvation and fear of hell, compassion for Our Lord's suffering, the need to avenge it and liberate the holy places that rightfully belong to God, the concern for personal reputation, the cowardice and lechery of those who stay behind.