Ch. VII THE COUNCILS OF PIACENZA AND CLERMONT 249 
 
 
tection to crusaders, "just as had been done by pope Urban."65 It seems clear
enough that Urban initiated the "Privileges of the Cross", and that it was
an innovation is indicated by the request made by ivo of Chartres, a famous
canon lawyer, for an interpretation of this "new institution", inasmuch as
he was not sure that he had jurisdiction in a case which involved the loss
of his holding by a crusader.66 
 What the pope was asserting was that the possessions of crusaders, milites
Christi, were to be temporarily as exempt from secular control as the property
of the church. Obviously this was a very considerable extension of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. Temporal rulers were to be deprived of the services and payments
of vassals who enlisted in the papal armies for an indefinite period of service
overseas. Once William the Conqueror had punished a vassal, than whom he
knew of no better warrior, by taking away his fief because he went off to
fight Moslems in Spain without permission.67 But so popular was this holy
war that neither kings nor feudal lords seem to have made protest against
the invasion of their feudal rights. 
 Pope Urban II, then, had come to Clermont with a well-prepared scheme for
raising an army with which to make holy war on the enemies of Christianity.
it was a method of recruiting that worked so well that popes were to continue
to use the same method of launching crusades at home as well as abroad. It
does not seem reasonable to assume that so effective a plan had been conceived
quickly, say in the period between Piacenza and Clermont, and it may be noted
that there is no trace of it in anything that Gregory VII had proposed. Urban
assumed responsibility for this new form of holy war which he was initiating.
Unable to go himself, he said that he had appointed a churchman "in our place".
Bishop Adhémar, he said, was to be the leader (dux), and all who went
should obey his legate's commands as they would his own. There is no evidence
that the pope had any intention of selecting a layman to head the, forces
he intended to recruit by offering religious inducements for military service.
To be sure, the legate was a fighting ' bishop who marched at the head of
his own contingent and led his men into battle. But the legate associated
himself with the much larger army of the count of Toulouse, and it was the
news that Raymond, the greatest lord in France, had 
 
65 Hagenmeyer, Epistulae, p. 175. 
66 Bridrey, op. cit., pp. 132—135; Villey, Croisade, pp. 151, 152.

67 Ordericus Vitalis, Historia ecciesiastica (ed. Le Prevost, III), p. 248.