Page View
Wolff, R. L.; Hazard, H. W. (ed.) / Volume II: The later Crusades, 1189-1311
(1969)
XIII: The Crusade of Theobald of Champagne and Richard of Cornwall, 1239-1241, pp. 463-486
PDF (13.4 MB)
Page 466
466 A HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES II of subsidies varying from one twentieth to one thirtieth of their annual incomes. In 1237 king Louis IX of France wrote to the pope to say that his conscience was troubled. When he received money from his Jews, how could he be sure some of it was not the product of usury? Gregory suggested that he could solve this by giving a generous sum for the crusade. In the autumn of the same year the episcopal sees of southern France were asked to pay off the debts of Amairic of Montfort. It was usual to assign to a crusading baron the money collected in one or more dioceses except for sums that came from lands of other crusaders. As a rule part was to be given to the baron to prepare for the crusade and the rest sent to him after he reached the Holy Land. It is not surprising that this practice should have led to considerable confusion. The papal records were not kept very carefully. In February 1238 Gregory was obliged to admit that he had assigned the revenues from the diocese of Poitiers to both Geoffrey of Argentan, an English knight, and Peter of Dreux, count of Brittany (termed duke by the Bretons). Peter had the prior claim. The count of Macon was assigned the money raised in the province of Lyons, but later three of its dioceses were ordered to give their funds to the duke of Burgundy. By the 1230's, the Albigensian Crusade was over as far as the need for armed force was concerned — it was in the hands of the Inquisition. Although the continuous wars against the Moslems in Spain and the attacks on the Prussians continued to call for men and funds, the chief rival for the resources and men destined to relieve the Holy Land was the Latin empire of Constantinople, where the emperor John of Brienne was facing a Bulgarian-Nicaean coalition. He had sent his son-in-law and co-emperor, Baldwin II, to the west to get help.4 In the late summer of 1236 pope Gregory decided to assist the Latin empire. On October 23 he wrote to Peter of Dreux, who had apparently already agreed to lead an expedition to Constantinople, to assure him that he would not be obliged to obey the orders of the emperor, the patriarch, or the doge of Venice. On December 9 the pope wrote a rather vague letter to the most important French baron who had taken the cross, Theo bald, king of Navarre and count of Champagne. He did not actually ask Theobald to go to Constantinople instead of to Pales tine, but he begged him in general terms to aid Baldwin in any way he could. On May 9, 1237, Henry of Dreux, archbishop of Rheims and brother of Peter, was directed to finance the count of Bar if he 4 See above, chapter VI, pp. 2 18—220.
Copyright 1969 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved. Use of this material falling outside the purview of "fair use" requires the permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. To buy the paperback book, see: http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/1733.htm