Crusaders and Revolutionaries by Darren Baker

Author:Darren Baker [Baker, Darren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, Norman Conquest to Late Medieval (1066-1485), General
ISBN: 9781526745521
Google: my8NEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
Published: 2021-01-30T00:46:38+00:00

Amaury goes to England, he leaves on crusade, the battle of Gaza

In late 1235, Amaury visited England in the company of nine of his knights. As the constable of France, he would have been received in state by Henry, although details are lacking. The de Montfort brothers probably met then and paid a visit to their great-aunt Loretta, the widow of Robert IV de Beaumont. For the last fifteen years she had been a recluse in Hackington, not far from Canterbury. Their visit to her can be surmised from another visitor she received years later. He was Theobald, the son of Bouchard of Marly and therefore a cousin of the de Montforts on their mother’s side. As a younger son, Theobald had been destined for a career in the Church and had risen to become the abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay in the year of Amaury’s visit to England. It seems that Amaury, who was still a benefactor of the abbey, encouraged Theobald to undertake his later journey to see Loretta because, as it turned out, she had a miracle story to tell about the Virgin Mary.19

A preaching campaign for a new crusade had begun the year before, and Amaury’s visit to England can be seen in connection to his intention to join it. His stated destination was the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury. Pilgrimages of this sort were common to crusaders seeking spiritual support for their expeditions. For material support, the money Simon owed him for the successful acquisition of Leicester likely came up during the visit. What arrangements they made are unknown, just that Amaury was ‘pacified so that he might not raise any dispute in the matter’. Simon also took the cross at this time, probably in the summer of 1236, along with other English nobles. In July, Henry decreed that if Simon died ‘either beyond or on this side of the seas’, the income from his estates was to be used to pay off his debts for four years after his death. With his income hovering around £500 a year, it suggests his indebtedness stood at three or four times that figure.20

His brother was in worse straights. Amaury had left the south with debts of around £10,000, and Montfort l’Amaury generated about the same income as Leicester. Taking the cross was the only sure-fire way out of this dilemma. The constable would lend his prestige to a crusade still in the planning stage and in return receive substantial backing from the king and pope. In October 1237, Pope Gregory IX, who had succeeded Honorius in 1227, ordered the archbishop of Sens to give Amaury £2,000 worth of crusade legacies and redemptions collected in his lands, and the bishops of southern France were asked to provide another £2,000 towards paying off his debts. Louis IX and the Crown, mindful of how much they owed the de Montforts for their acquisitions in Languedoc, gave Amaury just over £10,000 and the signal honour of bearing the arms of France in the Holy Land.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.