The document is perhaps of even more elemental importance to crusade history because of its afterlife. The medieval papal curia was, by its nature, an institution that treasured retrospection. When wishing to formulate a decision or frame a pronouncement, Roman officials always looked to precedent. In this context, Quantum praedecessores became the benchmark for crusading, presenting an official memory of what Pope Urban II had supposedly preached in 1095 and enshrining certain ideas about the nature of the First Crusade itself. Into the second half of the twelfth century and beyond, the
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