Definition
An archaic legal and ecclesiastical term with two related historical meanings:
1. Pilgrims who wore a cross sewn onto their outer garments as a symbol of their religious mission, particularly those undertaking a crusade or penitential journey to the Holy Land.
2. The Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, a military-religious order created to protect and defend pilgrims traveling to and within the Holy Land.
Both usages derive from the same concept — persons marked by or devoted to the cross — and appear in historical legal texts primarily in connection with the rights, privileges, and protections afforded to crusaders and religious travelers under medieval English and ecclesiastical law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simply the plural of "croise," with no independent meaning in modern English.
Historical common usage: The term had no meaningful independent life in ordinary English; it functioned as a borrowed or latinized form within legal and ecclesiastical writing.
Editorial note: Because the term carries no modern common meaning, there is no risk of a lay reader importing a wrong definition. The more significant gap is between the term's historical legal specificity — denoting persons with formal legal status and privileges — and its modern invisibility. Researchers encountering it in historical sources should not treat it as mere descriptive color; in medieval legal contexts it could carry consequences for jurisdiction, property rights, and legal protections.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the historical layer of the Law Mind corpus. Researchers will encounter it in:
— Medieval English legal treatises, particularly in discussions of the legal status of crusaders, including protections from civil suits and debt collection during a crusade.
— Ecclesiastical and canon law sources, where the cross-bearing pilgrim occupied a recognized legal category with attendant rights and duties.
— Property and succession contexts, where the departure of a croise on crusade could affect the administration of estates and the tolling of legal proceedings.
The primary trap for corpus researchers is anachronism: the term appears identical to a simple descriptive label but references a formal legal category. In sources citing Britton (Britt. c. 122) — the late 13th-century English legal treatise — the term is used in a specifically juridical sense. Blount's Glossographia and Cowell's Interpreter, both cited in the Black's entries, treat it as a term of art worth glossing, confirming that even contemporaries recognized it required explanation.
The two meanings (pilgrims generally, and the Knights of St. John specifically) can blur in historical sources. Context usually disambiguates: references tied to military organization and defense point to the Hospitallers; references tied to individual legal status and travel point to the broader pilgrim category.
There is no modern legal relevance. This term does not appear in any contemporary statutory, regulatory, or case law context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both the first and second editions of Black's Law Dictionary give nearly identical entries, citing Britton, Cowell, and Blount. The consistency across editions reflects the term's stability as pure historical record rather than living law — no editorial revision was needed because the law itself had not moved.
Britton (c. 122) is the operative primary source here, and its authority for English law of the late 13th century is well established. The citation to Cowell (John Cowell's Interpreter, 1607) and Blount (Thomas Blount's Nomo-Lexicon, 1670) places the term in the early modern English legal glossary tradition — both works were reference tools for lawyers encountering archaic terms in older documents, precisely the function the Black's entries continue.
Neither Black's edition elaborates on the specific legal privileges attaching to croises, which were considerable under medieval law: crusaders could claim royal protection of their property, deferral of litigation, and certain exemptions from feudal obligations during their absence. Researchers needing that substantive dimension must look beyond Black's to canon law sources and Britton itself.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is specific to English and Western European medieval legal tradition. It has no independent development in American law and appears in United States legal materials only as a historical reference.