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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 7810801" data-attributes="member: 21169">Propaganda and recruitment:The core of all crusade promotion consisted of papal proclamation of the expedition in question since popes alone possessed the requisite authority to declare a crusade and offer the spiritual and material privileges enjoyed by crusaders… Urban II instructed the assembled prelates to announce what he had said throughout the churches of their dioceses and to preach the cross. He himself proclaimed the crusade in the course of his itinerary around France... The basic form of [the crusade encyclical] was finally established by Quantum praedecessores (1145) for the Second Crusade: an initial narrative section explaining why a crusade is necessary, an exhortation to take the cross, and a listing of crusader privileges... Before secular assemblies, two famous examples are the preaching of St Bernard before Louis VII and the magnates of France at Vézelay in 1146, and his dramatic preaching at Conrad III of Germany’s Christmas court the same year. Indeed, it became entirely normal for crusade preachers to utilize such occasions, as well as more recreational gatherings like tournaments, in an attempt to secure the vows of important men in attendance, to launch promotional campaigns more broadly, and, frequently from the Second Crusade, to make public a prince’s assumption of the cross. Many were highly stage-managed affairs planned weeks or months in advance with little left to chance. The parlement held in Paris in March 1267 is a good example. There, Louis IX took his second crusade vow, followed immediately by three of his sons and others close to him, his relics of the Passion deliberately on public display for the occasion: he had secretly informed the pope of his intentions the previous September. - The Oxford History of the Crusades (1995) ed Jonathan Riley-Smith Unlike his mentor Gregory VII’s similar proposal in 1074 to assist Byzantium and march on to Jerusalem, Urban’s provided a clear structure of message, response and reward: the positive incentive of remission of penance instead of Gregory’s bleaker, more amorphous emphasis on martyrdom; the replacement of Gregory’s vague promise of ‘eternal reward’ with precise spiritual and temporal rewards signalled by swearing a vow and taking the cross. Oaths provided a familiar, serious bond of commitment. Simple, memorable slogans were deployed: ‘Take up your cross and follow me’, ‘Liberate Jerusalem’, ‘expel the infidels’, ‘earn salvation’, ‘God Wills it’. The subsequent campaign of public ceremonies, private conversations, sermons, letters, legates, and the recruitment of local opinion formers, notably monastic networks, displayed propaganda management of a high order. - The World of the Crusades (2019) Christopher Tyerman </blockquote>

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