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October 1. Lyons. Pope Innocent IV writes to the patriarch of Jerusalem and papal legate (Robert de Nantes) and the archbishops and bishops in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, relating that he has learned that several Genoese, Pisan and Venetian merchants from the areas around Constantinople who sail to the Kingdom of Jerusalem carry on their ships many Greek, Bulgarian, Ruthenian and Vlach Christians, men and women, and offer them for sale to everyone, including Saracens, such that many of them are kept as slaves (servi) by their buyers. Many of these Christians flee to the churches and their prelates declaring themselves free and unjustly reduced to servitude, and they ask to be restored to their pristine liberty. The pope orders the addressees, if it is so, to give a kind hearing to these Christians who are unjustly detained and seek the Church’s protection to avoid servitude, and to have them returned to freedom in their own cities and diocese.