"Ingrana, you can't really help them, these Norman women have been in Lepanto for a long time, and there is no news of any pilgrims recovering the city of the Levant, they are indeed stranded in the barren mountains of Asia Minor, which is very dangerous." On the other side, Mrs. Chiser came and admonished.

During her stay in Bari, Chiser and Ingrid had become close friends, but there was one thing that Chiser kept from her, although in the letters from her husband Merlot, she already knew that Gawain had abducted the eldest princess of the Roman Empire.

"Since Gawain asked Ingrid to go to Asia Minor, there must be a way to deal with it, right? Why should I intervene and stir up the whole situation? "Often, Chise. Merlot smiled bitterly in her heart.

In the inn area under the fortress of Lepanto, it was raining outside, and Norman women of all colors were standing and sitting, constantly deliberating about what to do with their own bad men: many of them mortgaged their estates and castles to the monastery at a low price, and exchanged them for gold and silver ritual utensils and candlesticks, and took them with them when they melted them, saying that they would follow the prince of Bohemond to Anatolia or the Levantine kingdom, and that there would be endless estates at that time, and that they would not care about the small lands of Apulia and Calabria.

"Now that there is no land, and the gold and silver have been taken away, it is really difficult to sustain it." A woman braces her cheeks in pain, her face full of helplessness.

"The church and the monastery also often come to collect debts, and the local parish deacon explicitly wanted me to marry his brother - the deacon threatened me many times, and at one time said that my husband was wounded and died, and made me break my mind; A moment later it was said that he had been taken captive by the infidels. If I am willing to remarry, the deacon can give me some more money to pay the ransom; After a while, I said my husband. In Anatolia, I found a brown-skinned exotic woman as a wife. A slightly young and amorous woman next to her couldn't hold back. As he spoke, he began to cry.

At this time, Inglina, who was sitting by the windowsill, could not help but say to the young woman, "You said that you mortgaged the manor land to the monastery, but why did they come to ask for the debt?" It stands to reason that the money has already been lost. ”

The Norman women looked at each other for a moment, and then said, "This lady, do you know the live and the dead?" ”

Inglina shook her head. Because the city of Bari strictly rectified and picketed the behavior of the local church before Gawain commanded the Red Hand Dalian expedition, and forbade any native of Bari to mortgage their property and go on pilgrimage (because the contract had to be surveyed by the subordinate body of the Grand Senate of the Brocade Book before it could take effect), so there was no mortgage trend in the rest of Europe in Barry - but in Provence, Lorraine, Calabria, Rhineland, Swabia and other regions, because knights and peasants frantically sold all their fields, mills, orchards, etc. Woodland, real estate in these areas has been staggeringly cheap in the past two years.

Actually, this is a sight. Just like a man named Gilbert at the time. Morality. The nobles of Nogent, as described in their diary, "were in debt, and the peasants were exploited by famine. So when the crusaders (pilgrims) shouted suddenly, they were immediately answered everywhere, and the doors of the warehouse were violently opened. Commodities that used to be extremely expensive were sold at a bargain price. For example, five sheep sell for only seven silver pennies. Then, after everyone had filled their stomachs, they were eager to embark on the pilgrimage. As soon as possible, all the things that were not needed on the way were sold for cash, so that the price would be determined not by the seller but by the buyer, and many valuable fields would be sold at a pittance price. ”

And the biggest beneficiary is the churches and monasteries of the Norman women, these places are not short of money: their warehouses are full of all kinds of things made of gold and silver (including many ancient gold and silver coins, the church stores them, and is reluctant to give them out for circulation, they short-sightedly believe that if they show their wealth, they will be robbed by bandits or armed lords), and if necessary, just melt some of them and make them into various coins or silver cakes (at that time, churches and monasteries in Western Europe, like feudal princes, had independent rights to tax and mint money) , you can buy large tracts of land for generations of nobles, knights and peasants.

For example, in the books of the monastery of Moresme in West Francia, it is clearly recorded that a nobleman sold a large tract of land to the monastery for only twenty-seven silver livres (the livre is equivalent to the pound, that is, the new pound prescribed by Charlemagne as the modern standard of 491 grams, which is heavier than the Roman pound of 327 grams); And a well-off country gentleman brother sold the orchard, the elder brother in exchange for a mule that could carry luggage, and the younger brother in exchange for thirty shillings (a shilling is equal to a shilling, and a livre of silver is equal to twenty sous; a su-twelvepence, so that one livre is equal to two hundred and forty pence) of silver; There was also a nobleman who mortgaged his rich estate and received sixteen silver livres.

Of course, in addition to the ecclesiastical monasteries, one of the beneficiaries of the expedition to the Holy City was the secular kings, most of whom did not participate in the expedition in the name of the kingdom left behind (of course, in fact, as far as the situation was concerned, those who were in a hurry to participate in the pilgrimage were either bankrupt peasants, or lords and knights who were usually brave and ruthless in the local area, and few decent people went, especially the kings), and at this time they also took the opportunity to buy mortgaged land with large sums of money, such as Philip, the king of France, for only 1,500 silver livres, He bought the whole county of Bourges, because the count of Bourges went to join Hugh's expedition and his brother went on an expedition on the front foot, and the elder brother bought land on the back foot, which was really the most pleasant deal.

And the way of selling land is also different, for example, as the Norman young woman said just now, there is a difference between live and death bond.

In their explanation, Inglina understood: the so-called living mortgage means that the right to operate and the ownership of the land is still in my hands, but I must pay the part of the harvest as a debt every year to the church and the monastery with debts until it is paid off; The so-called death pledge is to completely give the management right to the church, all the land output during the debt period will be owned by the church, and the ownership contract church will also "keep" for you, when you pay off the debt, the church will pay you back the contract.

Of course, if you borrow less money from the live mortgage, you will borrow more money from the dead mortgage, which should also be an inevitable result.

The husbands of these Norman women, some of them were held alive and some of them were held to death, but whether they lived or died, they had no intention of managing the family property, so a group of women went to Lepanto by boat, and then hired some mules, and went from land to Constantinople, or to Thessaloniki, and to Asia Minor to find their husbands, by land and sea, that is, to save more money, which was really pitiful. (To be continued.) )