The most famous fighting churchman of the Crusades wore a bishop's ring. When Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095, he put a cleric in charge of it — Adhémar of Le Puy, his legate and the expedition's spiritual head. Adhémar did more than bless the army: he rode in its battle line, fought at Dorylaeum, and at the desperate breakout from Antioch in June 1098 carried the relic of the Holy Lance at the front, though he privately doubted it was genuine and let the men believe only because it steadied them. He died of fever that August, and the crusade never again found a leader every faction trusted.

This figure is a priest of that stamp at the sharp end: advancing in mail and a flat-topped great helm, a long yellow surcoat over his hauberk, drawing a sword across his body from behind a red shield rayed with gold. Set him among the sword-and-relic company he belongs to — the Crusader Priest Standard Bearer raising the bishop's banner, and the Crusader Priest of Jerusalem — and read the fuller case for armed clergy in this piece on whether medieval priests fought. In a diorama he takes his place a rank ahead of the men-at-arms, sword out, a churchman leading from the front the way Adhémar did at Antioch.

Model: MK250 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set