ABSTRACT
Once France and the papacy had agreed on the terms for a royal crusade, the partners lost no time in implementing it. The one campaign to which the king was personally committed was to begin in the spring of 1226; the army was to assemble at Bourges in the middle of May. That schedule presented no special difficulties for Louis, since the crown routinely organized summer campaigns a few months in advance; in this case, the leaders met at Paris on 29 March to work out the details (Doc. 3.11). The same month, probably at that royal council, the bishop of Auxerre compounded his obligations to the king on the plea of ill health; he acknowledged that in return for six hundred pounds paris, the king had remitted the bishop’s obligations to serve personally in the host and to send knights on the Albigensian crusade, as well as “the tenth that we are likewise held to pay to the same [king] from our revenues for the aforesaid business of Albigeois.” 1 This demonstrates not only that the tenth was being collected by the crown, as provided at Paris (Doc. 26.9), but also that it was being treated as a debt owed to the king. Many bishops were to discharge all these obligations by participating in the expedition. 2
