ABSTRACT
A history of the word crusade in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française.
In 1095, Pope Urban II did not use any Latin word for ‘crusade’ but he might have used the form cruce signatus, thus designating not the activity itself, but the agent. The definition in the first edition of the dictionary of the Académie française (1694) reflects this linguistic heritage, but also the difficulty of exhaustively defining the meaning of the word ‘crusade’. In addition to the honouring of the crusader, which went hand in hand with the disqualification of the enemy, it contained two competing sememes that will henceforth guide the definition of the word: religion and war. The entire history of the definitions of the word in the nine editions of the dictionary of the Académie française bears witness to the existence of this fragile and shifting ridge between these two semantic poles. Alternately present, then omitted or reactivated, their presence or absence favours not only the emergence of a more political and dynamic dimension of the crusade but also the confusion with holy war. On the one hand, the crusader and the war against the infidels (for the crusade) and on the other, the reconquest of Jerusalem (for the holy war). It is not until the latest edition of the dictionary of the Académie française (edition in progress) that the lexical relationship between the two becomes clearer and the definition of crusade is given a historical reality in line with the words of UrbanII.
