ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the crusades to the Holy Land; a series of holy wars in the narrower sense launched in response to papal bulls calling to free Jerusalem and liberate the Church of the Holy Sepulcher from non-Christian hands. It considers divine law and its associated rights and duties, along with the constitutive link between such rights and duties and the crusades. These factors explored on three levels: the social structure level, the socio-psychological level, and the institutional level of just war. The chapter discusses how the medieval concept of law and rights is rooted in a concept of security which developed in Orthodox Christian society, and the concepts of Christian knighthood, and the apocalyptic monarchy. Finally, it explains how the social structures of law, rights and duties, and the more specific discourse surrounding the crusades were interpreted and perpetuated during the crusades by focusing on the two emperors of the House of Hohenstauffen.
