'Tertia Pars': The Economy of Trinitarian Redeemers at the Time of the Crusades and Jihad. An Alternative to the Papal Economy of Armaments

'Tertia pars': la economía de los redentores trinitarios en la época de las cruzadas y la yihad. Una alternativa a la economía papal del armamento

Abstract

From a concrete and material perspective, money has always been an undisputed value that is both a reflection of, and a driving force in politics and religion and of the ensuing economies, not to mention its specific financial and market aspect. This study offers a panoramic view of the close connection between the politics of the papacy and the investment of money at the time of the crusades and jihad. As will be clearly demonstrated, the most substantial investment was made for rearmament purposes and for «holy war» enterprises. As an alternative to the propaganda and the politics of rearmament and crusading, there were various voices crying out Deus non vult. Among these was a concrete alternative project to military service that proposed, as in the manner of an international Red Cross, a humanitarian service to redeem Christian and Muslim prisoners of ‘holy wars.’ This task required an important quantity of money. The Trinitarian redeemers assume as a rule of life the arithmetic division of all goods into three equal parts: one for one’s sustenance, another for the hospitality of the poor and the final one for the redemption of captives. This is a unique case throughout history in the distribution of church property, despite the precise rules based on the intuition of Ambrose of Milan codified in the Decretum Gratiani.