60 Chrissis
Latin Empire.120 At the other end of our period, in 1399–1400, the Roman pope,
Boniface ix, called the faithful to make donations in churches across Europe
to help the defence of Byzantine Constantinople against the Ottomans;121
a similar call was issued by Eugenius iv in 1439, after the Council of Florence.122
The papacy also paid lump sums from its own treasury or gave a part of its
annual revenues to finance certain campaigns. William vi of Montferrat was
given 15,000 marks from the papal treasury for his campaign to Thessalonica,
in the 1220s.123 In 1245, Innocent iv pledged one tenth of papal income to
the defence of Constantinople.124 Similarly, in 1443, Eugenius iv promised
that the papacy would give one fifth of its revenues to finance the army and
fleet for the Crusade of Varna.125
The costs of a crusade were not only covered by the Roman Church. The
great nobles who were to lead the contingents could also make significant con-
tributions. In the anti-Turkish naval leagues, especially that of the 1330s, the
Church was not expected to pay for the expenses of the other participants;
each had to pull their own weight, as both John xxii and Clement vi made
clear.126 Humbert of Vienne, the leader of the second wave of the Crusade of
Smyrna, in 1345, agreed to undertake the campaign for the most part at his own
expense.127 Venice often had to shoulder at least part of the expenditure asso-
ciated with the naval campaigns. The Dukes of Burgundy also spent extrava-
gantly large sums to fund their participation in the crusades of Nicopolis and
Varna.128 With regard to Varna, King Ladislas had to raise a special tax on the
towns and villages of his realm to pay for his expedition.129 At any rate, the
combination of the various methods of funding continued until the end. After
the fall of Constantinople, Calixtus iii successfully raised funds for a crusade
of recovery through crusade taxation, redemption of vows and selling some of
the papacy’s own possessions.130
120 Tanner, Decrees, 1:295–96; William E. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England
to 1327 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), pp. 250–55.
121 Barker, Manuel ii, pp. 158–59; Tautu, Acta Urbani vi, nos. 85, 90; cf. idem, Acta pseudopon-
tificum, nos. 82–85, 91–98, for the Avignonese pope Benedict xiii.
122 Hofmann, Epistolae pontificiae, 2: nos. 220–21.
123 Pressutti, Regesta Honorii, no. 4754.
124 Tanner, Decrees, 1:295–96.
125 Hofmann, Epistolae pontificiae, 3: no. 261.
126 Housley, Avignon Papacy, p. 168.
127 Setton, Papacy, 1:195–97.
128 Setton, Papacy, 1:345–46.
129 Imber, Varna, p. 20.
130 Housley, Later Crusades, pp. 102–03.