‘Cruce Signari’: The Rite for Taking the Cross in England

A Crusader, both etymologically and historically, was a person who had ‘taken the Cross.’ The symbolic act of taking the Cross was practiced routinely from 1095 onward by all those who had made a vow to participate in the expeditions to the Holy Land and elsewhere which were proclaimed, sanctioned, and indulgenced by the papacy. In the eyes of the canonists, when they came to analyse the institutions of the Crusade, the formal taking of the Cross was viewed as a ceremony which solemnized the vow by which the Crusader bound himself, both morally and legally, to serve in the ranks of the Crusade.