Participation in the First Crusade (1095–1099) and the subsequent campaigns associated with the crusading movement granted significant spiritual and temporal rewards to the crusaders, and in some cases these privileges even extended to the crusaders’ families. The question of what motivated the crusaders has long attracted considerable attention in scholarship, particularly focusing on the offer of remission of sins and how far the idea of material gain entered the equation. The papacy put mechanisms in place to defend the crusaders’ persons, families, and possessions. Crusaders were entitled to trial in an ecclesiastical court and cases affecting them could be either hastened or delayed to take their crusader status into account. These elements must also have played a role in the decision to go on crusade.

Taking the cross was an expensive enterprise that required plentiful supplies, horses, chainmail, and weapons; allowing for disparities in rank and means the cost of the crusade was between two and five times a crusader's annual income. Charters and chronicles provide numerous examples of crusaders mortgaging or selling their land to pay their way on crusade; Duke Robert of Normandy famously mortgaged his duchy to his brother the king of England for 10,000 marks and the monks of Fleury melted two silver candlesticks worth thirty marks and a censor valued at over eight marks of gold to meet King Louis VII of France's demands for funds to help finance the Second Crusade. Renouncing unfair rights, customs, and exactions was a common means of attaining more modest sums; for example, Nivelo of Fréteval abandoned his practice of seizing the goods of the inhabitants of St Peter of Chartres in return for ten pounds towards his crusade expenses. Others either mortgaged their claims to tithes, market justice rights, and advocacies or sold possessions such as mills, fiefs, or serfs outright. The financing of a crusade was often a family enterprise centred on maximising the value of available resources and minimising the impact of crusade on the family coffers. Aware of the high material costs associated with crusading, the papacy also attempted to offset some of these expenses by exempting crusaders from taxation and interest on their loans, and allowing them to mortgage their lands and moveable property to raise the requisite funds.