Despite popular depictions of crusaders as prototypical European imperialists cynically exploiting faith, recent scholarship has proven the opposite,21 that every crusader “risked his life, social status, and all his possessions when he took the cross.”22 Nor was it “those with the least to lose who took up the cross, but rather those with the most.”23 Great lords of vast estates—not dispossessed “second sons,” as once believed—parted with their wealth and possessions upon taking the cross.
