sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 9

Anne E. Lester / Laura K. Morreale: A Crusader's Death and Life in Acre

As the demand for global and interdisciplinary histories grows, collaboration across specializations becomes crucial. Begun as an attempt to excavate the narratives embodied in material and textual sources formerly considered 'non-narrative', this book uses the account-inventory of one individual (supplemented by the wills of two other crusaders and the poems of Rutebeuf) to explore various approaches to material history. This 'sophisticated record of things in motion' enables historians to probe 'the lives and actions of those who collected, used, sold, gifted, and described these objects' (3). The account-inventory becomes a portal, enabling glimpses of how aristocratic crusaders represented themselves and how French crusader ways of life were (re)shaped in and by the port city of Acre, multilingual gateway to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, a hub of trade and pilgrimage, and home to diverse Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities. Macrohistory also becomes microhistory, as the contributors highlight the intimate process of Eudes of Nevers' attempts, in August 1266, to 'wind down a life, to give away one's possessions, to think about a family legacy, and to manage the longer-term care of one's body and soul' (9).

Understanding the account-inventory requires examining relationships between 'the textual and the tangible' (9), that is using material philology and codicological analysis to reveal texts as sites for cultural dialogue and production, and documentary archaeology to explore how past individuals described the objects they used and produced. Those producing the account-inventory chose to write in Old French rather than Latin and to utilize the roll form typical for expense accounts or inquests: these were working documents created in a collaborative process of creation, revision, and annotation. Their contents, including lists of gifts and wages to members of Eudes' aristocratic household and charitable organizations in Acre, illuminate the religious and devotional landscape in Acre (and Eudes' interaction with it), and the usage, meanings and value attached to portable luxury items: silverware, fabrics, jewels, relics, books. Pragmatically speaking, the rolls reveal the size, composition, and inner workings of the entourage Eudes took with him and subsidized when fulfilling the crusade vow he had inherited from his father Hugh IV, duke of Burgundy, by reinforcing the garrison Louis IX had established in Acre: knights (some with their own households), squires, servants, turcopoles, crossbowmen, livestock, and mounts. They also reveal the staggering costs of crusading: despite infusions of funds from Burgundy (carried by agents of the Templar order), Eudes had taken out hefty loans from both the Templar and Hospitaller orders.

Like the journey of Eudes' embalmed heart towards interment in the familial crusader mausoleum at Cîteaux (which sparked a trend followed by Louis IX and his son Jean Tristan, among others), the inventory rolls' voyage from Acre to France and then to the archives in Paris reveals another function: that of commemoration. The rolls may have served as the crusader equivalent of a relic translation account for 'crusader heirlooms' or as the basis for a failed bid at canonization, encoding the 'transfer of a set of ideas, memories, experiences, and ideals: the transfer of an ideology of aristocratic crusading embedded within things' (104). As a Scion of a crusading lineage, Eudes had arranged the marriage of his daughter Yolande to Louis IX's son, Jean Tristan (born in Damietta), and it may be that it was useful for the couple to have a list of knights who served Eudes, many of whom remained in Acre, particularly since shortly after receiving 'the good sapphire' bequeathed to him by Eudes, Jean Tristan soon joined (and died with) his father Louis IX on his second crusade.

For Eudes, dying, had taken care to distribute personally worn jewelry and relics to his heirs and dearest companions, including those knights who oversaw the sale, donation, and distribution of his possessions: Érard de Vallery (who received luxurious vestments and chapel fittings as well as relics gifted to Eudes by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, a cloth threaded through Eudes' embalmed heart, a songbook, a romance, and a history of the lands Outremer); Geoffrey of Sergines (the son of another Geoffrey of Sergines, commander of the garrison in Acre); and Hugh of Augerant. All three were commemorated and extolled as exemplars for others to follow by taking the cross in preparation for Louis IX's second crusade in poems Rutebeuf may well have performed for the royal court. These individuals and their families call into question the neat definitions applied to 'crusader' and 'crusading', as both Érard and Geoffrey criss-crossed the Mediterranean in support of various campaigns. So too, Rutbeuf's poems (or as he styled them, 'sermons') call into question how ideas about crusading were (re)negotiated via the shared concerns of vernacular and reforming discourses. As did Rutbeuf's poems in manuscript, these concerns were informed by poems of religious satire and devotion, miracle stories, concepts of marriage and poverty, and terms deployed in the formation of chivalry and masculinities: prudhommie, gentillesse, courtoisie.

Key essays by Andrew Jotischky and Jonathan Rubin provide readers with a panoramic survey of the diverse devotional and intellectual landscapes of Acre, and discuss elements of Eudes' stay in Acre easily overlooked: his likely interactions with Frankish families long-settled in the East, his reliance on interpreters, and his decision not to donate to some of the most powerful institutions in Acre, including the Templars.

Sharon Farmer and Maureen Miller describe the inventory's staggering variety of fabrics as typical of a period when French elites sought out luxury and quotidian textiles originating from production centres in Europe, the Mongol Empire, and the Indian subcontinent (214). And yet, as the furnishings for Eudes' chapel suggest, he reserved the most costly materials not for his own clothing but for three sets of vestments embroidered in gold and pearls and a cross-reliquary, portable altar (with relics), monstrance, pyx, and goblet intended to enable his adherence to the devotional trend of frequently receiving and reverencing the consecrated host.

Similarly, as Richard Leson notes, Eudes' 'henap', or drinking cup, may have resembled that recovered at Resafa, and certainly carried personal significance for its recipient, Hugh of Augerant. The Templar of Tyre claimed that contact with the objects Eudes had bequeathed to the poor Outremer healed the sick, and by virtue of its contact with Eudes, the 'henap' not only played a crucial role in rituals meant to 'foster communal, knightly bonds, and to display wealth and status', but to forge a corporate unity similar to a 'secular Eucharist' where 'male solidarities were reinforced through naming, gifts, and personal memories' (220-1).

Caroline Smith turns to Jean de Joinville to illustrate how aristocratic households were constructed and then often rearranged due to deaths and departures or as ties of service, employment, and obligation were dissolved or created. Smith explains the puzzling absence, in the account-inventory, of Eudes' horses and personal weapons and armor by demonstrating that crusaders tended to gift these items to the military orders or fighting comrades.

The volume comes full circle with Uri Shachar's examination of the cross-cultural similarities and differences between Eudes' account-inventory and Mamluk estate inventories. Both types of documents demonstrate a concern for charitable bequests, for taking stock of personal possessions, debts and loans, for one's heirs and for the future of one's soul.

This fascinating volume demonstrates the considerable benefits to be reaped from collaborative and interdisciplinary scholarship that crosses between genres, methodologies, and cultures to shed light on individuals who moved freely around the Mediterranean world. It should prove extremely inspirational for students (who will relish items such as beaver's testicles and chessboards) and scholars of material culture, religion, aristocratic culture, and Mediterranean exchange. Certainly the account-inventory and/or other relevant sections of this affordable paperback (and e-book) could easily be incorporated into a global history survey or an upper-level course on the crusades and/or the medieval Mediterranean.