The Crusades, the Genoese and the Latin East - DSpace at ...

Fourth Crusade, there was an increase of approximately thirty percent in the charge per knight
with a horse and squires. Some crusaders must have also concluded that it would be cheaper to
share merchants' ships and embark separately, preferably departing later than the main crusading
wave. Additionally, this increase
in prices spelled trouble for the leadership of the Fourth Crusade
in 1202, which failed to recruit enough crusaders. It was not until the Seventh Crusade that
maritime transportation became more accessible. As Benjamin Kedar showed, in August 1246, on
the eve of the crusade, travel fees to the Middle East mounted to £4 tournois per person for a first
class place, £3 and £2 tournois for second and third places (platea) respectively. Unlike the
situation in Genoa in 1190 the demand for ships on the French Riviera on the eve of the crusade
in 1248 `exceeded by far the facilities available. ' Nevertheless, third-class places remained
relatively cheap. In Marseilles they mounted to 45s tournois. 124
According to the data in Peter
Spufford's Handbook of Medieval Exchange, the Genoese pound was slightly stronger than the
French tournois in 1248 and was, on the average, exchanged for 18s. 125
By that time the journey
was both much cheaper and also much safer, but there were no doubts that a crusade to the Holy
Land meant a maritime expedition.
The sea was a challenge every crusader had to face from the time of the Third Crusade
onwards. There were new rules for the crusading expeditions to the Holy Land which forced
inherent changes both in the conceptualisation and the practicalities of the crusades. Genoa's
contribution to the formation of the crusading movement at the early stages of the Third Crusade
may be compared with the contribution that Pope Innocent III made to the institutionalisation of
the movement at the time of the Fourth Crusade. He then acknowledged the need for even further
control over the crusaders, from the preaching and recruitment stages, through regulating the
fund-raising and taxation, and most importantly the fixing of crusading rights and formulation of
indulgences.
The economic value of religious sentiment:
The Genoese involvement in the Third Crusade was studied in this chapter through the
commercial activities of the Genoese as recorded in the notarial cartularies. Drawing on sources
which were not used thus far in the historiography of the Third Crusade led to many new
conclusions. Ample evidence revealed that the Genoese were highly committed to the crusade.
124 Benjamin Kedar, `The Passenger List of a Crusader Ship', p. 271.
125 The exchange data is taken from Peter Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London, 1986), pp.
108-9. The data includes eighteen cases of money exchange between the Genoese pound to the French-
pound tournois recorded between 1248 and 1291. In twelve cases the Genoese pound was purchased for
less than 15s tournois. In 1248, however, the Genoese pound was slightly stronger. In three out of five
records, the Genoese pound equalled between 17s and 19s tournois. For Spufford's data online, as
published in the Handbook, see MEMDB on http: //sccOl. rutgers. edu/memdb last accessed on 10 December
2002
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