ABSTRACT
The two principal methods of financing the crusades in the twelfth century are illustrated in a document from Fleury recording three decisions made by the monks early in 1147.1 They agreed, first, to take 40 marks’ worth of silver from the crucifix in order to feed the poor who were flocking to the abbey on account of the famine prevailing in France at that time, which had forced many nobles to sell their property and go to distant lands. Second, they ceded to abbot Macharius two silver candelabras ‘of wonderful workmanship’, weighing 30 marks, and a censer of eight marks of gold and three ounces2 in order to meet the demand of king Louis ‘who was about to go as a pilgrim to Jerusalem in order with the help of God to protect and set free the Christians who lived there and were oppressed by many attacks from the Saracens’. The king extorted money ‘from the treasures of the churches of his realm in order to carry out this work’ and asked at first for 1,000 from abbot Macharius, who replied that this was too much in view of his abbey’s recent difficulties, the failure of the vineyards for seven years, and the exactions of the king and his servants. Louis then reduced his demand to 500 marks, which Macharius said was still too much, and finally to the equivalent of
1 Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, ed. Maurice Prou, Alexandre Vidier, I (Documents publiés par la Société historique et archéologique du Gatinais 5; Paris 1900-07), 340-3, no. 150. The document is dated by the editors 1146-7, but since the passage describing the mortgage of the censer (n. 2 below) refers to the third Easter ‘ab illo qui iam imminebat’, the decisions were probably made before Easter (20 April) 1147. The document itself, however, was clearly drawn up later, since it refers to subsequent events.
