Ransoming Captives examines a medieval order of friars that specialized in the ransoming of Christians captured in the wars and raids of the medieval Spanish Reconquest. Captives suffered the fate of permanent slavery in Muslim Granada or North Africa unless their release was won through the payment of a ransom. The prospect of liberation for these Christians and of financial gain for their Muslim captors opened up a unique channel of commerce between these warring peoples. With the founding of the Order of Merced the medieval Church came to play a role in this commerce. In the first third of the thirteenth century and during the crusades of James the Conqueror of Aragon Pere Nolasc and a few associates began to collect alms for indigent captives. His early success led to the formal establishment of a religious order in 1235 and to its expansion within the crown lands of Aragon Castile and southern France. Institutionally the new order represents an adaption of the Church's broader concern for the needy to the conditions of a military frontier. Captives now seen as Christ's poor became fit objects for Christian alms and their benefactors eligible for an array of spiritual benefits.