ABSTRACT
When writing his still-definitive treatment of the Fifth Crusade nearly 30 years ago, James Powell noted that, with the exception of the Rommersdorf Briefbuch’s collection of papal bulls, little direct evidence of the modus operandi of those preaching the Fifth Crusade survived, perhaps because the unusual character of crusade appeals meant that they did not fit neatly into typical sermon collections. Instead, Powell cleverly utilized papal bulls, a crusade preaching treatise probably written by a Paris master preaching the Fifth Crusade in England (the Brevis ordinacio), and the ad crucesignatos sermons of Jacques de Vitry to isolate the main themes that would dominate Innocent III’s vision of the crusade and that of many of the preachers he appointed. These themes were the crusade’s inclusion, in the aftermath of the populist preaching of Fulk of Neuilly and the crusade of the pueri, of all who wished to participate, and the interweaving of crusade preparations with peace-making efforts and calls for social and personal moral reformation which would be reiterated in the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215).1 What no one realized in the 1980s was that crusade sermons delivered during preparations for the Fifth Crusade did survive in at least two preaching handbooks: Paris, BnF, MS Lat. 14470 and Paris, BnF, MS nouv. acq. lat. 999. Both combined raw materials for the preacher with reportationes of sermons delivered in Paris and its environs by one of the main groups drawn on by Innocent III when selecting preachers for the Fifth Crusade: Paris-trained masters.2
