In April 1213, Innocent III summoned the Fourth Lateran Council and, in preparation, initiated a two-year period of planning for the reform of the church and the promotion of the crusade. He described the process in this way:

Because it is not possible to convene the council for two years, we have decided in the meantime, with the help of prudent men, to investigate in the various provinces those matters that demand the attention of the apostolic supervision and to appoint suitable men as procurators of the business of the Holy Land so that, if the sacred council approves, we...

The first major testing ground for the crusade program of Innocent III lay in France in the period between 1213 and the opening of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. As we have seen, Innocent placed considerable emphasis on the support of the French monarchy to ensure the success of the crusade, but the situation in that country was far from favorable. Not only was it divided by the Albigensian Crusade, but large segments of the northern French aristocracy were embroiled in a conflict over the succession to the county of Champagne and the impending war against King John of...

The task of tracing the direct influence of Innocent III’s crusade plan in the sermons of the preachers of the Fifth Crusade is rendered difficult by the nature of the available sources. Alone among the existing collections, the Rommersdorf letter book, which was designed to serve the needs of the abbot of Rommersdorf in his preaching of the crusade, reveals a conscious effort to bring together the letters of Innocent III and the constitution, Ad libemndam, for this purpose.¹ On the basis of this source, it is possible to infer the important role that Innocent’s ideas played in the formation...

The words of the preachers throw light on only one aspect of the making of a crusader. They give us some idea why an individual would leave home and family on a pilgrimage that might easily end in death, but they tell us very little about the actual process of recruitment.¹ A narrow focus on preaching as the means of recruitment has led scholars to emphasize the importance of individual decisions to take the cross. In the case of the Fifth Crusade, however, Innocent III early sought to ensure that both the secular and ecclesiastical leaders of society would provide...

The question of finance was crucial to the success of the crusade.¹ Already in 1213 the pope had initiated efforts to collect money, and at the Fourth Lateran Council he launched his tax on the clergy. The reasons for these initiatives are not difficult to find. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, secular rulers were hard put to raise money for their wars. Aside from feudal dues and customs revenues, they depended almost entirely on the incomes from their royal domains, and these were far from sufficient to support extraordinary military activity. In the famous phrase of the...

For Sir Steven Runciman, the most important factor behind the ultimate failure of the Fifth Crusade was “the absence of one wise and respected leader.”¹ Others have been more specific in attributing the disaster to the pigheadedness of the papal legate, Pelagius.² But the result is the same. The interpretation of the Fifth Crusade has come down to the question of the capability, character, and personality of one man, or at most a small group of individuals.³ This view is consistent with the narrative sources for the crusade, and there is a measure of truth in it that, in the...

The Rhenish and Frisian fleet, some three hundred ships, departed from Vlerdingen in the Netherlands on May 29, 1217. This was the first contingent of the Fifth Crusade to actually get underway. It would not be the first to arrive in the East. The army led by King Andrew of Hungary and Duke Leopold of Austria, which did not set out until the fall of 1217, arrived long in advance of the Rhenish and Frisian contingent, which did not land in Acre until the late spring of 1218. This delay was not a matter of chance, but was premised on...

The arrival of the German and Frisian crusaders in Acre in the spring of 1218 marked a new phase of the Fifth Crusade, with Egypt its objective. Oliver Scholasticus probably gives the most accurate account of this decision when he says that the plan had been decided at the Fourth Lateran Council.¹ We can fill in the subsequent events from other sources. Soon after the new contingents reached Acre, their leaders met with King John, the duke of Austria, the heads of the military orders, and the patriarch of Jerusalem to decide on their next step. The Gesta Obsidionis Damiate...

The stalemate lasted through the summer and into the fall of 1219. Given the small number of reinforcements that arrived from the West in the spring passage of 1219, the army could do little but maintain its defenses and await the arrival of the fall passage. The crusaders had already learned that Frederick II had postponed his arrival in Damietta until March 1220.¹ Negotiations over his coronation as emperor were proceeding slowly, despite the fact that the death of Otto IV had removed the possibility of opposition from that quarter. With some reluctance, the pope had agreed to this postponement,...

The margin between victory and defeat in Egypt was always narrow. The terrible loss suffered by the crusaders on August 29, 1219, was the prelude to the capture of Damietta, but that victory was itself no guarantee of success. On the one hand, the crusaders had gained control of a key port and base of operations that enabled them to dominate the northeastern part of the Nile delta; on the other, they confronted the army of the sultan, which controlled the main route to Cairo. Whatever strategic advantage the crusaders had gained by the conquest of the city depended on...

In the immediate aftermath of the defeat at Barāmūn and the surrender of Damietta, the universal concern was to fix the blame for the disaster. Popular opinion was divided. The apologia of Oliver Scholasticus probably represents as well as any the feelings of the clerical leaders of the Fifth Crusade. Carefully adding up the results, he found some positive benefits among the ruins. But he could not bring himself to end even on this mixed note. Instead, he focused on the plans of the pope and the emperor for yet another crusade.¹ The author of this section of the Éstoire...