Audita Tremendi and the Call for the Third Crusade Reconsidered, 1187–1188

This article presents the first forensic source criticism of the papal encyclical that launched the Third Crusade, Audita tremendi (1187/1188); it makes four main arguments. First, its core empirical contribution is to demonstrate textual variation across the four issues of the letter. Second, it engages with the debate on whether the crusading movement existed in an institutional form in the twelfth century by challenging the interpretation that the reissue of Audita tremendi and similar papal documents was the result of uninspired "plagiarism." Third, it offers a new reconstruction of the immediate context of the issue of the document and argues that, rather than being the product of a long period of careful composition, it was issued as a hurried response to the arrival of the news from Hattin. Fourth, it reconsiders the role of the encyclical in the call for the Third Crusade and contends that the papacy was focused not on the promotion of the military expedition but on the launch of an immediate liturgical campaign of communal repentance. Additionally, the article prints comparative transcriptions of the four issues as an appendix, three of which are published here for the first time.