During the thirteenth century, the idea of crusade reached its most strained interpretation when successive popes proclaimed crusades against their political opponents in Italy – chiefly the Holy Roman Emperor and his dynasty – and in the end, when the papacy itself splintered, even between rival claimants to the papal throne. Such campaigns dragged on intermittently until the 1370s. For the papacy, these were just as much a logical defence of the Church as crusades in the East, but it was not surprising that crowds did not rush to support the Holy Father, and that plenty of faithful
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