Crusade of 1267

[3] In response to the recent attacks of the Egyptian sultan Baibars against the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had resulted in the loss of Arsuf and Caesarea, Pope Clement IV issued the bull Expansis in cruce authorising a formal crusade in August 1265.

[2] According to the Chronica minor auctore Minorita Erphordiensi: In the year of our Lord 1266, Pope Clement sent out letters throughout the kingdom of Germany commanding the Dominicans and Franciscans to preach the cross faithfully and urgently against the Sultan of Babylon, who is the Pharaoh of Egypt, and against the Saracens overseas, so that the suffering of the Christians [there] might be alleviated and for the support of the Holy Land.

[2] Out of the same kingdom-wide preaching campaign and Papal bull, several leading noblemen of the Empire opted to crusade against Prussia instead of in the Holy Land.

[4] The Chronica minor also reports that many of those recruited in Germany in 1266 were pressed into serving Count Charles I of Anjou in his conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily, which had Papal sanction as a crusade against the pope's main rivals in Italy, the German Staufer dynasty.

The famous poet Konrad von Würzburg, who was living in Basel and an associate of the Psitticher at the time, may even have composed his poem Der Welt Lohn as a piece of crusade propaganda for the occasion.

[8] The Rhenish crusaders were probably only permitted to go to the Holy Land because of the death of King Manfred of Sicily, Charles of Anjou's rival, the previous year.

This was probably not the same embassy that returned to Mongolia with a Papal ambassador, Jayme Alaric, since that group must only have departed after 20 August, too late for the crusading army that arrived in the spring.

A Genoese war fleet of 25 ships under Luchetto Grimaldi is known to have left Genoa in late June and arrived in Acre, the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, on 16 August.