Yes! In fact this was one of the first things everyone thought of when planning a crusade, from the smallest local lord to the most powerful counts and kings. What would happen to their territory, their property, and their families while they were away?

At the local level, a crusader’s land or a family member could be left under the protection of relatives who didn’t go with them. But since crusading was often a “family affair” and brothers, fathers and sons, and/or cousins would all travel together, this was sometimes difficult. Families could also be protected by the local parish church or local monastery. Pope Urban II, who launched the First Crusade in 1095,

“extended the protection of the Church to crusaders, decreeing that their property was to be inviolate until their return." (Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading, pg. 22)

But did the church really have the authority and the influence to enforce this in 1095? Maybe not. The legal theory behind this evolved throughout the twelfth century.

“The importance of this issue is underlined by the fact that the First Lateran Council legislated on it in 1123, taking crusaders’ ‘houses, families, and all their goods into the protection of St Peter and the Roman church, as was established by our lord Pope Urban’ and threatening to excommunicate those who disturbed them.” (Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, pg. 136)

All of this really became codified in church law much later, by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Later crusaders often made contracts with the church for mutual protection - the church would take care of their lands and families while they were away, and the crusader would make donations to support the church. There are probably hundreds, maybe even thousands of charters like that from all over Europe, since that’s just how it worked out in the 13th century.

(My personal favourite, just because he turned in up my research on a completely different topic, is Alexander of Archiac, from the Saintonge area of western France. He made a contract like this while preparing to go on the Fifth Crusade in 1219.)

But 1215 is much different time, and even 1123 is a generation later than the First Crusade. What about the original crusaders? Could the church really protect their land back then? Some crusaders, at least, expected that they would have to solve any problems on their own. One option was to come to an agreement with their family and/or neighbours. Jonathan Riley-Smith gives the example of Baldwin of Vern d’Anjou, who went on crusade with Count Fulk V of Anjou (the future king of Jerusalem) in 1120. Baldwin had only a daughter so he was worried that if he left, his territory might be claimed by his brother Raul. They agreed that Baldwin’s wife and daughter would manage half of his land and Raul would manage the other half. If Baldwin died on crusade (apparently he did not), his wife should remarry and all of his territory would pass to her new husband. If his daughter married while he was gone, his daughter, her husband, and Raul would split all the territory equally in half. If Baldwin’s daughter died Raul would inherit all of the property.

“Raul promised always to deal faithfully with Baldwin and the two women, never to try to ‘take away property to which they had a right and to aid them against anyone who injured them’ even to making war himself. The agreement, which demonstrates clearly the threat posed by a younger, and probably unmarried, brother to a crusader's wife and daughter and the need to take steps to counter it while the crusader was thousands of miles away, was witnessed by ten men and was guaranteed by Baldwin's immediate lord.” (Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, pg. 135-136)

Some crusaders made agreements like this but still returned to find their lands and families in turmoil. Riley-Smith gives another example of Hugh of Chaumont. Hugh went on the First Crusade, and when he returned, his castle at Amboise had been taken over by his uncle, who arranged a marriage between a female relative and another man who was now ruling Hugh’s lands in his place. When Hugh returned, he had to take back Amboise violently - exactly the sort of violence that the church had wanted to avoid.

“Violence had broken out while Guy of Rochefort was in the East - ‘scarcely anyone could be brought to justice’ - and his return seems to have been punctuated with appeals for his intervention. A very bad case of disorder was only brought to the notice of the viscount of Étampes once he was back. In Lorraine the abbey of St Hubert-en-Ardenne felt itself to be gravely exposed to predators once its natural protectors, Godfrey of Bouillon and his nobles, had gone to the East.” (Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, pg. 146)

Godfrey of Bouillon, who ended up as the first ruler of Jerusalem, had sold his duchy of Lower Lorraine to the local bishops in order raise money for his journey. This was another option for crusaders - sell or abandon their territory, whether they intended to come back or not. Godfrey didn’t come back, so he never had to deal with the consequences of his absence.

Maybe the most common solution was leaving territory in the hands of a wife, sister, mother, or another female relative. The role of women in the crusades is often overlooked, because there aren’t as many sources that talk about them, and also because they were back home in Europe while the men were off having adventures in the east, which is what male medieval chroniclers were more interested in. Women are also ignored sometimes because they typically couldn’t inherit land or rule on their own in western Europe, so this is seen as an extraordinary, abnormal event, and the land returned to the surviving male crusaders when they came back home. There was a medieval stereotype of a crusader’s wife, who either tearfully begged her husband not to leave, or stoically encouraged him or even nagged him about it. One common example is Adela of Blois, whose husband Stephen of Blois returned home after abandoning the crusade. She is often depicted as a shrew who forced Stephen to go back to the east, where he ended up being killed.

But women must have done an extraordinarily good job of administering their male relatives’ territories. Despite her stereotyped depiction, Adela governed Blois for many years after Stephen’s departure and death, and many other wives and other relatives must have done the same. I wonder if this affected the status of women in the crusader states in the east? European women in the crusader states had more rights - they could own their own land, inherit territories from men, and even become queens in their own right, something that was impossible in France especially. I haven’t seen anything written about this specifically but I wonder if it was easier for crusaders to recognize that women were able to do these things on their own…