No. 16.
The Council of Paris, held in 1188, under the Pontificate of Pope Clement III. The Tenths, called Saladin Tenths, were then decreed, to provide for the Expenses of the War against Saladin, King of the Turks.
In the month of March of the year of grace 1188, towards Mid-Lent, a general council, to which were summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and barons of the kingdom, was convoked at Paris by King Philip. An infinite number of soldiers and people there took the cross. It was resolved, with the consent of the clergy and the people, that, considering the urgent wants then experienced (the king having nothing more at heart than the undertaking of the voyage to Jerusalem), a general tenth, from which no one should be exempt, which was named the Saladin tenth,[135] should be pre-levied for that year only.
Establishment of the Tenth.—In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, greeting. It is ordered by us, Philip, king of France, with the advice of the archbishops, bishops, and barons of our dominions, that the bishops, prelates, and clerks of the churches convoked, and the soldiers who have taken the cross, shall not be troubled for the repayment of the debts they may have before contracted, with Jews or Christians, until two years have revolved, reckoning from the first festival of All Saints which shall follow the decree of our said lord the king: so that at the following All Saints the creditors shall receive a third of that which is due to them, and thus, from year to year, at the same period, until the entire acquittal of the debt. The interests for anterior debts shall run no longer, dating from the day on which the debtor shall have taken the cross. The Crusader who is a legitimate heir, son or son-in-law of a soldier not a Crusader, or of a widow, shall procure for his father or his mother the advantage granted by the present decree, provided he be not in the enjoyment of other revenues than that arising from the labour of his father and mother; but if their son or son-in-law was not at their charge, or even if he did not bear arms and the cross, they shall not enjoy the said advantage; but the debtors who shall have lands and revenues, within the fortnight which follows the approaching festival of John the Baptist, shall point out to his creditors the lands and revenues upon which they shall be able to recover their debts, on the terms above expressed, and according to the form prescribed, by means of the lords in the jurisdiction of whom these lands shall be. The lords shall have no power to oppose this consignment, short of satisfying the creditor themselves. Those who shall not have lands or revenues enough to form such a consignment, shall furnish their creditors guarantees and securities for the acquittal of their debts at the term fixed; if within the fortnight after the festival of St. John the Baptist, they have not satisfied their creditors by a consignment of lands, or by guarantees and securities, if they have no property, as it has been ordered, they shall not enjoy the privilege granted to others. If a clerk or a crusade soldier be the debtor of a clerk or of a crusade soldier, he shall not be troubled before the next All Saints, provided he can furnish him with a good guarantee for payment at that time.
If one of the Crusaders, eight days before the Purification of the Virgin, or later, consign, in favour of his creditor, some money, some work, or some bill, the creditor cannot be forced on that account to consider him liberated. The bargain by which a man has bought of another Crusader the annual produce of an estate is good and valid. If a soldier or a clerk has engaged or consigned his lands or his revenue for some years to another Crusader, or to a clerk or a soldier not crossed, the debtor, for that year, shall collect the produce of the lands or the revenues; but the creditor, after the expiration of the years during which he has enjoyed the consignment or the guarantee, shall continue to enjoy it a year longer, to compensate for the loss of the first year; so that, however, the creditor shall have for that first year half of the revenue for the cultivation, if he has cultivated the vines and the lands which were consigned to him as security. All bargains which shall have been made eight days before the Purification of the Virgin, or which shall be made after, shall be authentic. It will be necessary for all the debts coming within the favour of the present decree, that the debtor shall give a guarantee as good, or even better than that which he had given before. If the parties are not agreed upon the goodness of the guarantee, it shall be referred to the lord of the creditor; if he do not answer to this demand, the affair shall be taken before the suzerain. If the lords or princes under whose direction the creditors or the debtors may be, refuse to give their hand to the execution of that which is ordered by the present decree, on account of the privileges given to the debtor, or of the consignments to be made, and if, warned by the metropolitan or the bishop, they have not done it within forty days, they will be liable to excommunication; but if the lord or the suzerain make it his duty to show, in presence of the metropolitan or the bishop, that he has not failed in this formality towards the creditor, or even the debtor, and that he is ready to execute what is ordered, the metropolitan or the bishop cannot excommunicate him. No Crusader, whether clerk, soldier, or other, shall be held responsible but for debts already demanded legally at the time at which they shall have taken the cross; he shall not be passible to others before his return from the Holy Land. They who are not Crusaders shall pay, at least this year, the tenth of all their property and revenues, except the monks of the order of Citeaux, of the Chartreux, of Fontevraud, and the lazar-houses, with regard to the property which belongs to them. Nobody shall meddle with the property of the communes, unless it be the lord of whom they hold. For the rest, every one shall retain the rights he had before in the commune. The grand justiciary of an estate shall always levy the tenths of it. Let it be observed, that they who are subject to pay the tenth, shall pay it upon all their goods and revenues, without beforehand subtracting their debts. It is not till after they have paid the tenth that they may pay their creditors from the remainder of their property; all laymen, as well soldiers as those that are subject to the taille (poll-tax, or something like land-tax), upon taking the oath, under pain of anathema, and clerks under pain of excommunication, shall pay the tenth. The soldier who is not crossed shall pay to his lord who is crossed, and of whom he holds, the tenth of his own property and of the fief which he holds of him. If he holds no fief of him, he will pay him the tenth of his own property, and will pay the tenth to those of whom he holds directly. If he holds of no lord, he will pay the tenth of his own property to him upon whose fief he lives. If a man possessing an estate in proper, finds upon his estate tenths belonging to another than to him to whom he owes them, and if the proprietor can prove that they legitimately belong to him, the former cannot retain these tenths. The crossed soldier, a legitimate heir or son-in-law of a non-crossed soldier, or of a widow, will receive the tenth of his father or mother. Nobody shall lay hands on the property of archbishops, bishops, chapters, or churches that depend upon them, but the archbishops, bishops, chapters, or churches themselves. If the bishops collect the tenths, they shall remit them to those who are appointed to receive them. The Crusader subject to the taille, or to the tenth, and who shall refuse to pay them, shall be arrested, and placed at the disposal of him to whom he is indebted. He who has arrested him cannot be excommunicated for doing so. He who shall pay his tenth with readiness, according to the law and without constraint, shall be recompensed by God.
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No. 17.
Note upon the Greek Fire, taken from the Manuscript Life of Saladin, by Renaudot.
It is certain that the artificial fire called Greek fire, sea fire, or liquid fire, the composition of which is found in the Greek and Latin historians, was very different from that which the Orientals began at this time to make use of, and the effect of which was the more surprising, from the cause of it being entirely unknown; for whereas the first was prepared of wax, pitch, sulphur, and other combustible materials, there was nothing in this but naphtha or petrol, of which there were springs near Bagdad, like those of which the ancients speak, near Ecbatana and on the frontiers of Media. All naturalists agree that this bituminous matter takes fire very easily, and that it is impossible to extinguish it with anything but sand, vinegar, and urine. An experiment was made with it before Alexander, by lighting a great quantity of it by trains, which burnt for a long time without being able to be extinguished; a buffoon, even, having been rubbed with it, the fire injured him so seriously that there was great difficulty in saving his life. And yet, notwithstanding the ancients were acquainted with it, it is not known that they frequently employed it in war, nor that it entered into the composition of the true Greek fire, invented, according to common opinion, by Callinichus, under Constantine Pogonatus, but which is, notwithstanding, more ancient by many centuries. Thus it is very probable that the Orientals, not having made any use of it before this siege, Ebn-el-Mejas employed it successfully as a new invention; and that the Christians, on account of the resemblance, called it the Greek fire, from the idea they conceived that it might be the same as that with which the whole Levant was acquainted. This fire having been in use for the defence of besieged places, was called oleum incendiarium, oleum medicum; and it was employed in the time of Valentinian, under whom Vegetius, a military author, who gives the composition of it, wrote his work. Æneas, an ancient author quoted by Polybius, also speaks of it in his Treatise upon the Defence of Cities, and Callinichus added nothing new to it, except the machines, or copper pipes, by means of which they employed it for the first time at sea, and burnt the Arabian fleet near Cyzicus. The Greeks continued afterwards to use these machines, with which they armed their fire-ships, and never communicated the knowledge of it to any other nation; any more than did the Mahometans their naphtha fire, when they had once learned the practice. Thus the names became confounded by the ignorance of the two nations; the Greeks calling, with much reason, the artificial fire of the Mussulmans, Media fire, and the Latins comprising both under the name of Greek fire; as the Orientals afterwards called gunpowder naphtha, from the relation they found between it and that fire which it made them abandon.
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