Excerpt from Annales Herbipolenses (1147)
Originally written by an anonymous annalist in Würzburg; Reprinted in The Crusades: A Documentary History; Translated by James Brundage; Published in 1962

Not everyone was convinced by the preaching for a holy war against the Muslims. There were those, as recorded by the following anonymous fifteenth-century historian of the German city of Würzburg, who saw other motives in this call to arms. Clearly, not every knight who "took the cross" and went off to fight the Muslim was a devout, or faithful Christian. Many went for individual profit, for new adventures, or just to escape boredom. Of course, the longer the Crusades lasted and the higher the cost in terms of lives and material, the more critics there were to the Crusader movement. And an unsuccessful mission, such as the Second Crusade (1147–49),...