Strings Attached? Crusade Politics and Amalric I’s Gift of a True Cross Relic to Grandmont Abbey

From the time of its purported recovery in Jerusalem by the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, the True Cross has been venerated as one of the greatest and most powerful objects and ideas in Christendom. Fragments of the potent relic abounded.  To possess such an object placed one within a lineage of powerful figures dating back to Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome and founder of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Beyond such terrestrial links, it connected its owner in the most primal way possible to the fate and life of the King above all other Kings, Christ himself. This dual nature made True Cross relics powerful tools in the hands of rulers from even the earliest days of Christian political rule. Those with access to such relics not only treasured them, but also gave them as gifts. Those able to request— and receive—relics of the True Cross could use those objects as testaments to their personal and associative sovereignty. In this paper, I will investigate how the political circumstances surrounding the 1174 donation of a True Cross reliquary to the abbey at Grandmont-en-Limousin by Amalric I, King of Jerusalem, reveals the patterns of kinship, allegiance, and international diplomacy and how the traditional patterns of relic-giving for diplomatic purposes were broadened and inflated in the crusading period.