Note on Names, Places, and Currencies

The many types of sources collected, edited, and translated in this volume employ a wide variety of naming styles in multiple different vernacular languages as was common in the linguistically diverse world of the medieval Mediterranean. In the case of well-known individuals, such as Louis IX, Thibaut V, count of Champagne and king of Navarre, as well as Eudes of Nevers and John of Joinville, we use an English version of their names. For knights of middling rank, without baronial titles, men like Geoffrey of Sergines and Érard of Vallery, we have retained the French forms of their first names. Likewise, for lesser-known individuals with names that derive from toponyms or occupations we have retained the original (typically French) spelling of their names as is the case with Étienne de Sissy, Gaucher de Merry, Étienne le Clerc, Guillaume le Chapelain, and Rutebeuf, the French poet whose name has no equivalent in English.

Similarly, the people and things described in Eudes’s Account-Inventory reflect the wide geographical span of the crusade movement, which connected crusaders like Eudes of Nevers and those from France, England, and Flanders to objects, merchants, mercenaries, and aristocrats from the Islamic world—stretching from Baghdad to Cairo to Granada. The diverse array of objects listed in our texts use a similarly wide range of place-names that reference production, manufacture, and sale. In many cases these were well-known locales with modern names such as Troyes, Burgundy, Liège, Damascus, Acre, and Constantinople. In other instances, when specific names of local regions or towns are mentioned, we have chosen to leave those in their vernacular or original language and to italicize those place-names. Wherever possible, in our translations, we have endeavored to use place-names that are familiar to an English-speaking audience. In most cases the original French and Latin names have been retained in the text editions, although we have capitalized places and proper names that would not have been capitalized in the original manuscript as such practices were not standardized in the thirteenth century.

The business of living and dying in Outremer was conducted in multiple different currencies simultaneously. Eudes’s account reflects this clearly. Those living with Eudes in Acre could move with seeming ease among the currencies of France, England, Germany, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Muslim world. Not surprisingly the most common currency referenced and used in Eudes’s circle was the French tournois, that is, the coin of account produced in Tours. One French livre tournois (l. t.) was equivalent to 20 sous tournois (s. t.); and one sous equaled 12 deniers tournois (d. t.) (see figures 9–10). The English pound, however, was of slightly better quality and thus slightly higher value than the French pound and was known as the mark, for it set the standard for good currency. When large sums were sent across international credit networks, aristocrats often used marks of silver rather than French pounds. One English mark (m.), for example, was equivalent to two-thirds of a pound, or 13 s. and 4 d., or 160 pennies. Versions of the mark and its equivalent were used in the southern Low Countries and in parts of northern Germany and, as is the case here, in Burgundy as well. The Account-Inventory also references the currency denomination de reaus, or “of the realm.” In the context of Acre, this is most likely the gold coin, or imitation gold dinar, that was the common crusader currency of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, or the silver dinar similarly minted in the crusader territories of Outremer (see figure 10). Jerusalem dinar (both silver and gold) had been minted over the course of the twelfth century, from the founding of the crusader kingdom in 1101 until the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187. Although no new Latin currency, with minor exceptions, was minted after 1187, the Jerusalem dinar continued to circulate as the coinage “of the realm” (see figure 11). It followed the similar valuation in which one pound, libra = 20 solidi; 1 solidus = 12 denarii. References to Italian coinages are surprisingly absent from Eudes’s Account. All of these coins were silver coins. Although the denominations of coins included pounds, sous, and deniers, until the late 1250s only the deniers or penny coin was ever minted in England, France, and the Holy Land. Thus, even if records of account list payments in pounds, when payment was rendered, it would have been in deniers, or penny coins, with 1 pound = 240 deniers. When payment of, for example, 12 pounds, 8 shillings was rendered in coins, it would have amounted—materially—to 2,976 silver pennies in coin. That would be several bags or chests of coins. When 500 marks were sent in aid to the Holy Land, that was the equivalent of 120,000 pennies, or deniers silver coins, possibly more given the strength of the English mark. Transport of such sums required significant logistics or sophisticated credit mechanisms, like those established by the Templars and the Italian banking families.

By far the currency with the greatest international reach mentioned in the sources was the bezant coin, which was a heavier and more valuable gold coin. The bezant or besant was equivalent to the Islamic dinar but took the name bezant from the Byzantine gold coin issued on the same model. By the thirteenth century, one bezant was equivalent to 24 quarrobles, which was equal to roughly 6 solidi and 8 denarii tournois. Bezants were minted under the Fatimids, then (after 1258) under the Mamluks in Egypt, and in various mints along the Levant Coast (figure 11). The Latin rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem also issued an imitation gold bezant, which was made from an equivalent quantity of gold and had inscriptions in Arabic running in concentric circles around the coin (figure 12). While the qualities of the Latin mints were, in most cases, not as good as those of the Islamic state, the two currencies were used interchangeably. The king of France, Louis IX, briefly minted a Christian gold coin with Latin inscriptions in Acre and again in France, after his return in 1254. Neither were successful or used extensively, and they appear to have been more of an ideological statement about Christian sovereignty than a true attempt at reforming the coinage of either realm.¹

1. For values of coins and equivalences, see Peter Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London: Royal Historical Society/Boydell and Brewer, 1986), for the bezant of Acre, 297–98. See also the equivalences gathered in the Medieval and Early Modern Data Bank hosted through Rutgers University Libraries: https://memdb.libraries.rutgers.edu/spufford-currency. For the values in Eudes’s Account-Inventory, see Chazaud, “Inventaire,” 173–75. For crusader coinage and circulation more specifically during the later thirteenth century, see David Michael Metcalf, “Burgundian Money in the Latin East,” Israel Numismatic Journal 5 (1981): 73–82; and Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades and the Latin East in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2nd ed. (London: Royal Numismatics Society and Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, 1995); and David Michael Metcalf, Robert Kool, and Ariel Berman, “Coins from the Excavations of ‘Atlit’ (Pilgrims’ Castle and Its Faubourg),” ‘Atiqot 37 (1999): 89–164. On the use of gold bezants as a money of account in the West, see B. J. Cook, “The Bezant in Angevin England,” Numismatic Chronicle 159 (1999): 255–75; also Yorio Otaka, “La valeur monétaire exprimée dans les oeuvres épiques,” in L’épopée romane: Actes du XVe Congrès international Rencesvals tenu à Poitiers du 21 au 27 août 2000, 2 vols. (Poitiers: Centre d’études supérieures de civilization médiévale, 2002), 969–78. More work is needed to understand how the multiplicity of coinage influenced the circulation of materials and cultural perceptions. On Louis IX’s use of gold coins, see William Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 206–13; and Jordan, “Etiam Reges, Even Kings,” Speculum 99 (2015): 619–21.