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 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.