Eagle Byzantium

"Inglina, you still can't actually help them. This group of Norman women has been staying in Lepanto for a long time, and there is no news of any pilgrims regaining the Levantine city. They are indeed stranded in Lepanto. It's very dangerous in the barren mountains of Iaconia." Over there, Mrs. Qise came over and warned.

During her stay in the city of Bari, Qise had already become a close friend with Ingrina, but there was one thing Qise still hid from her. Although she already knew that Gawain had abducted Rome from her husband Melo's letter home. The eldest princess of the empire.

"Since Gawain asked Inglina to go to Asia Minor, there must be a way to deal with it, right? Why should I intervene and mess up the whole situation?" Often, Qise Melo would smile bitterly in her heart.

In the posthouse area under the Lepanto Fortress, it was raining outside, and various Norman women were standing or sitting, constantly discussing how to deal with their heartless men: many of them mortgaged their manors and castles at low prices. Give to the monastery, exchange from the other party Get some gold and silver magic instruments and candlesticks, melt them and take them with you, saying that you will follow Prince Bohemond to Anatolia or the Levant to establish a kingdom. By then, there will be countless fiefs in the land, don’t worry. These small plots of land in Apulia and Calabria.

"Now that the land is gone and the gold and silver have been taken away, it's really hard to hold on." A woman held her cheek in pain, with a look of helplessness on her face.

"Churches and monasteries often come to collect debts, and the local parish deacon clearly wants me to remarry his brother. The deacon threatened me many times. At one time, he said that my husband had been injured and died, and told me to give up my thoughts; at another time, he said that he had been raped by an alien. The believers are taken away as captives, I am willing If I remarry, the deacon can give me some more money to pay the ransom; he later said that my husband found a brown-skinned foreign woman in Anatolia as his wife." A young and passionate woman next to him couldn't hold back. Stop, and started crying as he spoke.

At this time, Inglina, who was sitting by the window sill, couldn't help but said to the young woman. "Just now you said that you mortgaged the farmland of the manor to the monastery, but why are they still coming to collect debts? Logically speaking, you have already lost both money and money."

Several Norman women looked at each other for a while and then said. "Madam, do you know what is life and death penalty?"

Ingrina shook her head, because before Gawain led the Red Hand Dalian expedition, the city of Bari severely rectified the behavior of the local church and strictly prohibited any local people in Bari from mortgaging real estate. Go on a pilgrimage (because the contract must be approved by the subordinate agencies of the Grand Senate before it can take effect), so the mortgage trend in other parts of Europe is not available in Bari - but in Provence, Lorraine, Calabria, and the Rhine In areas such as Holland and Swabia, knights and farmers have been frantically selling off all their fields, mills, orchards, and woodlands in order to raise expedition assets. In the past two years, the real estate prices in these areas have become shockingly low.

In fact, this scene was exactly what a nobleman named Gilbert de Nogent described in his diary at that time, "The nobles were heavily in debt, and the peasants were suffering from famine and exploitation. So when the Crusaders (pilgrims) suddenly came The shouts were immediately echoed everywhere. The door of the warehouse was violently opened, and the goods that were originally extremely expensive were arbitrarily used. They sold them at a low price, for example, five sheep were sold for only seven silver pennies. Then, after everyone had filled their bellies, they were eager to embark on the pilgrimage and sold all the unnecessary things on the way as soon as possible. Cash, so that the price is determined not by the seller but by the buyer. Many valuable properties were sold at a negligible price."

The biggest beneficiaries are the churches and monasteries mentioned by the Norman woman. These places are not short of money: their warehouses are filled with various things made of gold and silver (including many ancient gold and silver coins. The church stores them , unwilling to send it out for circulation, they short-sightedly believed that if they showed their wealth, they would be robbed by bandits or armed lords), if necessary. As long as a part was melted and made into various coins or silver cakes (at that time, churches, monasteries in Western Europe, like feudal princes, had independent taxation rights and coinage rights), they could buy large tracts of land that had been owned by nobles, knights and farmers for generations.

For example, the account books of the Moresme Monastery in West Francia clearly record that a nobleman sold a large area of ​​land to the monastery and obtained only twenty-seven silver livres (a livre is equivalent to a pound, that is, from The new pound stipulated by Charlemagne, based on the modern standard weight of 491 grams, is heavier than the 327-gram Roman pound); and a well-off country man Gentlemen brothers sold their orchard. The elder brother exchanged it for a mule that could carry luggage, and the younger brother exchanged it for thirty sous. , so one livre is equal to two hundred and forty pence) silver money; there was also a nobleman who mortgaged his rich manor and received sixteen silver livres.

Of course, in addition to the church monasteries, the expedition to the Holy City also benefited secular kings. Most of them did not participate in the expedition in the name of staying in the kingdom (of course, in fact, in terms of the situation at the time, those who were eager to participate in the pilgrimage were either bankrupt farmers or lords and knights who were brave and aggressive and had bad deeds in the local area. Few decent people went, especially kings). At this time, they also took the opportunity to purchase large amounts of mortgaged land. For example, King Philip of France bought the entire Bourges County for only 1,500 silver livres, because the Count of Bourges went to join Hugh's expedition... The younger brother went on the expedition, and the older brother bought land right after him. It was really the most pleasant deal.

And the way of selling land also differed. For example, as the Norman young woman said just now, there are live mortgages and dead mortgages.

Ingridna understood from their explanation: the so-called live pledge means that the right to operate and own the land is still in my hands, but I must pay part of the harvest as a debt installment every year to the church and monastery with creditor rights until it is paid off; the so-called dead pledge means that the right to operate is completely given to the church, and all the land output during the debt period belongs to the church, and the church also "keeps" the ownership contract for you. When you pay off the debt, the church will return the contract to you.

Of course, the amount of money borrowed by live pledge is less, and the amount of money borrowed by dead pledge is more, which should be an inevitable result.

The husbands of these Norman women are either live pledges or dead pledges, but no matter whether they are dead or alive, they have no intention of operating their property. A group of women first take a boat to Lepanto, and then hire some mules to go to Constantinople or Thessaloniki by land to Asia Minor to find their husbands. They travel by land and sea, just to save more money. It is really pitiful. (~^~)