ABSTRACT
Crusades to the east, or rather their prologues, were marked by outbreaks of anti-Judaism. It should be stressed that nothing in the traditions of Christian violence or crusade theory could have justified theoretically, or would have led inevitably to, the persecution of Jewish communities, provided that no acts of those communities could be described as being presently injurious. The tradition of theatrical crusade preaching lasted throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Two levels coexisted in the crusading movement, one institutional and the other charismatic. The institution needed charisma if a crusade was to be launched at all, because no campaign could be fought without at least a nucleus of volunteers. The fact that the secular leadership of any crusade consisted entirely of volunteers made adequate chains of command hard to establish, which is one of the reasons why so many expeditions spun off course or ended up achieving very little.
