The Saladin Tithe of 1188: The Tax That Paid for a Crusade

In 1188 Henry II and Philip II taxed a tenth of rents and movables to answer Hattin.

11 November 2026 · Part of The Crusades, Medieval Economy & Guilds and Medieval England →

In January 1188, with Jerusalem lost to Saladin and a new crusade being planned, Henry II of England and Philip II of France agreed to tax almost everyone in their lands who had not taken the cross: a tenth of their rents and movable goods, to be paid once, in aid of the Holy Land. It became known as the Saladin tithe. It was not the first medieval tax, and it was not the last, but it is the clearest early case of a Western king using a crusade to justify taxing wealth that no earlier levy had reached.

The news that made the tax possible

The tithe followed a catastrophe. On 4 July 1187 Saladin destroyed the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem at Hattin, and on 2 October the city itself surrendered to him. Pope Gregory VIII answered with the bull Audita tremendi in late October 1187, calling the West to arms and presenting the disaster as a judgement on Christendom's sins.

The two kings who mattered were at war with each other, and the first task was to stop that. At a meeting near Gisors on 21 January 1188, Henry, Philip and Count Philip of Flanders took the cross. Within days a council at Le Mans, attended by Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre, who had come west to beg for help, set out how the venture would be financed. Henry then summoned his English bishops and barons to Geddington on 11 February 1188 and put the arrangement to them.

The money was the real problem. A crusade on the scale now contemplated meant paying for ships, provisions and the wages of knights who could not live off their own land for years. The old methods, such as individual vows and gifts to the Church, could not raise that sum quickly. A general levy could.

How the tithe worked

The ordinance, as Roger of Howden preserved it, was a tenth part of a person's rents and movable goods. Those who had taken the cross were excused, and so were the members of the Cistercian and Carthusian orders, the order of Fontevraud, and lepers. Knights and clergy who had taken the cross were not simply left alone; their own goods were treated differently, and the tithe owed by their dependants was collected on their behalf.

Three features set it apart from the taxes that English kings had levied before:

• It was assessed on movables and income, not land alone. Earlier English taxes had generally fallen on land, or on the hide or carucate. This one reached coin, plate, livestock, grain and the profits of trade.
• It was run through the Church, not the sheriffs. Assessment was organised by diocese rather than by shire, with panels at parish level made up of local clergy, representatives of the Templars and Hospitallers, and royal and baronial officials. The sheriffs, the king's usual tax gatherers, were deliberately kept out.
• It rested on a declaration. Each person stated what they owned, and the panel could check it. The system relied on conscience reinforced by social pressure, which is why the Church, not the exchequer, was thought the right body to run it.

Howden's text also threatened spiritual penalties for those who concealed their goods. A crusade tax was a religious obligation, and it was enforced with religious sanctions as well as royal ones.

England and France

The tithe was not collected evenly. In England it was levied in spite of heavy opposition and, on the evidence of the later historians, it raised a very large sum for the crown. The administrative machinery was already there, the king was determined, and the clergy, though reluctant, had agreed to the principle.

In France the picture was different. Philip Augustus faced resistance from barons and prelates who were unwilling to see their men taxed on the king's say-so, and the levy there is generally described as a largely unsuccessful attempt. The Cistercians, who claimed exemption in both kingdoms, were in the end induced to make a reduced, nominally voluntary contribution. The French evidence is thinner than the English, and the difference in outcome should be read with that in mind.

Part of the explanation lies in the two monarchies. Henry II's government had spent thirty years building a fiscal and judicial apparatus that could assess and collect from the whole kingdom. Philip's crown controlled a much smaller royal domain, and a good part of the wealth in his realm lay under the authority of lords who had no wish to see it counted for the king.

Chronology

The crusade that the tax did not launch

The tithe was collected for a crusade that Henry II never led. He died at Chinon on 6 July 1189, defeated in a war against Philip and his own son Richard. What he had raised passed to Richard, who was crowned that September and who, as John Gillingham's biography describes, set about turning the English kingdom into a source of cash for the expedition. Offices, lordships and exemptions were sold; the king's debts were settled; and the fleet gathered.

This matters for how we understand the Third Crusade. Richard left for the East with unusually deep resources, and he could afford to buy his way through the long siege of Acre, as we describe in our account of the siege of Acre. His campaign in Cyprus, set out in Isaac Komnenos and the fall of Cyprus, brought in a rich island that paid for more of the war. The shape of the fighting that followed, from Arsuf to the two marches on Jerusalem, depended on that treasury. Our record of Richard's operations shows how much of his time went on campaigns that only a king with ready money could sustain.

What the tithe began

The tithe did not become a permanent tax, but it created a precedent. English governments had now taxed movable wealth on a national scale, assessed by declaration and collected through local panels. The model was reused when Richard was held prisoner in Germany and England had to find his ransom. In 1193 and 1194 the demand was a quarter of the revenues and movables of the realm, and much of that burden fell to the chief justiciar, Hubert Walter, as we describe in Hubert Walter's years in government. King John later returned to the idea with a levy of a thirteenth in 1207.

Historians have long treated the Saladin tithe as a milestone in the history of English taxation, though not everyone agrees how far it should be read as the start of a line that ends in Parliament's control of the purse. What is clear is that a crusade, which was a religious enterprise, left the English crown with a better idea of what its subjects owned and a stronger claim to ask for it.

Conclusion: the price of a holy war

The Saladin tithe tells us what a crusade cost and who was expected to pay. The crusaders themselves risked their lives; everyone else was asked for a tenth of what they owned. Henry II and Philip II won enough consent to do it, and in England the levy brought the crown more money than it could have raised in any other way at the time. In France the same plan met a different political reality.

Neither king lived to spend the proceeds on the campaign as originally planned. The money outlasted Henry II, and the idea outlasted the crusade. A century that had begun with individual pilgrims selling their land to pay for the journey ended with kings taxing whole kingdoms to send an army.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Saladin tithe? It was a tax of one tenth of rents and movable goods, ordered in 1188 by Henry II of England and Philip II of France to finance a crusade after the loss of Jerusalem. Those who took the cross were exempt, as were certain religious orders and lepers.

Why was it named after Saladin? The tax was a response to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, and the name reflects that. The levy itself was not paid to Saladin or directed against him alone; it financed the crusade that was meant to answer his victory.

Did the tax work? In England it did, though it met heavy opposition, and it left the crown with a model that was reused for Richard's ransom. In France it is generally described as a failure, although the evidence there is thinner.

Was it the first tax of its kind? It was not the first levy in medieval Europe, but it is usually seen as the first general tax in England assessed on both income and movable property. It was also unusual for being run through the Church and parish panels rather than by the sheriffs.

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