Popes granted Holy Land crusade indulgences to Iberian reconquest campaigns

Evidence

Pope Gregory IX sends a letter to Jaume in November 1229, informing him that he is sending along men, laymen and clerics, to aid him in the conquest, and that he is “granting them that indulgence which is normally given to those who come to the aid of the Holy Land.” Gregory is very clear, too, about the purpose of the Crusade: returning territory to Christendom. He says that Jaume has taken the cross, “so that, once the enemies are captured or dispersed, the land may return to the Divine Cult and the rites of the Church may expand.” — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 910

Categorization

• XREF: Anidjar’s claim that the ‘War on Terror’ language and crusade-framing of Islam-West conflict has deep medieval roots in Christian holy-war theology; this shows the papal machinery treating Iberia and the East as one crusading front.
• ADDENDUM: Supports the vault’s existing genealogy of the West’s ‘clash of civilizations’ self-image by showing reconquest was formally assimilated to crusade by papal decree — the land-recovery framing (‘may return to the Divine Cult’) is a direct medieval ancestor of later reconquista discourse.