ABSTRACT
In its effort to disseminate the crusade messages, the papacy employed the friars of the mendicant orders extensively; the contribution of individual preachers, prominent members of the secular or regular clergy, was also significant. An educated Dominican trained in science and theology, James of Lausanne would have known the works of Aristotle and Aquinas very well. This chapter demonstrates the extent to which thirteenth-century crusade sermonists influenced the compilation of crusade sermons during the first five decades of the Avignon papacy, but it is obvious that the De predicatione sancte crucis of the Dominican, Humbert of Romans, exerted the greatest influence on later preachers, providing more preaching material and guidance than any other source. Despite loans from earlier models, the 'original voice' in fourteenth-century crusade sermons proclaims their authors' preoccupations with the fate of the crusade, reflects contemporary social and moral ills and mirrors the emergence of new political and economic priorities that were deleterious to the cause of crusade.
