While crusade planning did undergo important changes during the pontificate of Gregory X, less emphasis should be placed on the general council of 1274. Instead, Gregory’s reign should be looked at as a whole to show the changing nature of crusade planning, since a crucial element in that change – the passagium particulare – was taken up by Gregory himself from the very beginning of his tenure. Certainly, the general council demonstrated that this approach was endorsed by the Templars, Erard of Valery, and James of Aragon, but the strong element of papal control to crusade planning during Gregory’s time means that the endorsement of this idea by the pope himself, which he put into practice in 1272 with the aid of the king of France, should carry more weight. At the same time, this work has shown that the passagium generale, though it never came to happen, was still widely endorsed in Gregory’s time, and thus this era, as Housley first argued, was one in which the crusade was seen to require two stages – an era of a dual crusading policy. Gregory should therefore be seen not just as a great crusade theoretician and planner, but indeed as a great crusade leader – one so significant to the crusade he planned that its success came to rest on his survival.

As has been made clear, when Gregory took the papal throne, he began a concerted effort to rescue the Holy Land, focusing on this task as no pope had since Innocent III. To achieve his goals, Gregory undertook a systematic investigation into the needs of the Holy Land, which was aided by the fact that he had himself been in Acre when he was elected as pope. Such an investigation revealed that the Latin East was hanging on by the slimmest of threads. The peace treaty between King Hugh and Sultan Baybars gave some respite, but there was no way of ensuring that it would be adhered to. It was clear that there was not a moment to lose; thus, the fragile condition in the Holy Land necessitated the adoption of the dual crusading policy, which Gregory recognised from the beginning of his papacy.