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Why did many Crusaders believe that joining a Crusade could bring forgiveness for sins?

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Crusades Crusaders departing for the Holy Land, chromolithograph of a 15th-century illuminated manuscript.

Many Crusaders believed that participating in a Crusade could bring forgiveness for sins because the Roman Catholic Church offered them a plenary indulgence for their service.123

In the medieval penitential system, it was believed that while the guilt of sin could be forgiven through absolution, a person still needed to undergo temporal punishment to satisfy the offense against God. An indulgence provided a remission of this required penance.12

During the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II initiated this practice by granting a plenary indulgence to those who undertook the military expedition to aid Christians in the East. Consequently, many participants viewed the Crusades as a holy undertaking, seeing the act of fighting as a form of penance and a means of achieving redemption and the expiation of their sins.234567