Preaching Crusade in Fifteenth-Century England: Instructions for the Administration of the Anti-Hussite Crusade of 1429 in the Diocese of Canterbury

Abstract

The projected anti-Hussite crusade of 1429, in which an English army led by Cardinal Beaufort was to march against the heretics in Bohemia, proved something of a debacle. Although money was collected, and an army seemingly raised, the force was instead diverted to assist the English war effort in France. The crusade has been studied largely as a political episode, and as an aspect of the career of Cardinal Beaufort. The scant available sources, nevertheless, include important evidence of the mechanisms used to publicize and encourage crusading in fifteenth-century England, and of the use of indulgences to stimulate both funding and recruitment. This article publishes and discusses the evidence for the arrangements adopted in the diocese of Canterbury, some of it in the vernacular. It demonstrates the hierarchical administrative organization, with the archbishop acting in response to instructions from the Cardinal, and answerable to him. It also demonstrates that Beaufort’s detailed instructions for the recruitment process – including the actual taking of the cross and granting of absolution to participants and donors – were a reworking of similar material used in the continental anti-Hussite crusade of 1421.