fastest among certain ecclesiastics who dealt in relics. For example, in
1248 Saint Louis undertook to invade Egypt in defence of the cross.
Possibly Saint Louis may have been affected by economic considerations
also touching the eastern trade, but his ostensible object was a crusade.
The risk was very great, the cost enormous, and the responsibility the
king assumed of the most serious kind. Nothing that he could do was left
undone to ensure success. In 1249 he captured Damietta, and then stood in
need of every pound of money and of every man that Christendom could
raise; yet at this crisis the Church thought chiefly of making what it
could in cash out of the war, the inference being that the hierarchy
suspected that even if Saint Louis prevailed and occupied Jerusalem,
little would be gained from an ecclesiastical standpoint. At all events,
Matthew Paris has left an account, in his chronicle of the year 1249, of
how the pope and the Franciscans preached this crusade, which is one of
the most suggestive passages in thirteenth-century literature:

"About the same time, by command of the pope, whom they obeyed implicitly,
the Preacher and Minorite brethren diligently employed themselves in
preaching; and to increase the devotion of the Christians, they went with
great solemnity to the places where their preaching was previously
indicated, and granted many days of indulgence to those who came to hear
them.... Preaching on behalf of the cross, they bestowed that symbol on
people of every age, sex and rank, whatever their property or worth, and
even on sick men and women, and those who were deprived of strength by
sickness or old age; and on the next day, or even directly afterwards,
receiving it back from them, they absolved them from their vow of
pilgrimage, for whatever sum they could obtain for the favour. What seemed
unsuitable and absurd was, that not many days afterwards, Earl Richard
collected all this money in his treasury, by the agency of Master Bernard,
an Italian clerk, who gathered in the fruit; whereby no slight scandal