Description

Eastern Christians did not acknowledge the Popes supremacy and many Catholics felt that it was lawful for him to declare a crusade to bring schismatics back to the obedience of Rome German knights fighting the Orthodox Russians at the Battle on the Ice in 1242 believed this as did the Hungarian prosecutors of the 1235 invasion of Bosnia which was thinly disguised as a crusade The Church even extended the object of crusade to believers in communion with Rome who refused to obey lawful authority After peasants revolted against the PrinceArchbishop of Bremen in 1204 over tithes and land rights Pope Gregory IX was persuaded to declare them heretics and proclaim a crusade against them and when the heresy of Catharism began to take root in southeastern France toward the end of the 12th century both Church and State considered the use of force to extirpate it