11
The Experience of Acre, ca. 1266
Jonathan Rubin
At the core of this volume is a document associated with Eudes of Nevers’s death. But what about the last months of his life? What can we know about his experiences in the East? What were his main impressions from his crusading campaign? Given the scarcity of pertinent source material, it is, of course, impossible to provide definitive answers to such questions, but one might argue that the count’s experiences were, to a large extent, shaped by the place in which he sojourned during these months—the city of Acre. Against this backdrop, a sketch of some of the bustling city’s characteristics and the diversity of its populace at the time can offer some insights and hypotheses concerning how Eudes and his men would have related to Acre and its residents.
Eudes landed in Acre on October 20, 1265, at a time when the city and its environs would certainly have made few newcomers feel safe. In March of that year, Caesarea—a major Frankish city located about fifty kilometers south of Acre, and one that King Louis IX had spent considerable time and money supporting—had fallen to the Mamluks. Later that month the town that had sprung up just outside the great castle of Castrum Peregrinorum (today known as ‘Atlit) was captured and destroyed by Mamluk soldiers under the command of Baybars, and the town’s inhabitants most likely took shelter behind the fort’s walls. Haifa, located a mere fifteen kilometers from Acre as the crow flies, seems to have fallen to the Muslims on the same day.1 During those same weeks in March, Acre’s inhabitants, fearing a Muslim raid, demolished the Chapel of St. Nicholas and the mill tower at Da‘uk.2 The city in which Eudes landed, therefore, was a major stronghold in a theater of war being waged against a mighty, encroaching enemy.
During Eudes’s stay in Acre, things certainly became no easier for the Franks. In June 1266, Baybars took up a position near the city before leaving to attack the castle at Safad, which fell to him on July 23, 1266, just before Eudes’s death.3 The imposing Templar fort at Safad had been constructed at great expense, and its capture by the Mamluks, followed by the execution of its defenders, must have resonated very strongly in Acre and in particular among its Templar inhabitants, with whom Eudes appears to have had close contact.4 Surely Eudes, who traveled to the East in order to fight the Mamluks, was not surprised by events of this kind, but he may have been frustrated that he was unable to participate in them in any meaningful way.
But while such bitter fighting, with the Franks mostly on the losing end, took place around the city, Eudes and his men may have been surprised to find that Acre was hardly a city in ruins, nor even desolate. Indeed, extant sources show that it was flourishing in many ways. Despite the military challenges noted above, Acre continued to attract considerable numbers of pilgrims. With the loss of the great traditional pilgrimage sites of the Holy Land, especially in and around Jerusalem, Acre came to house its own pilgrimage route, but whenever this was possible, pilgrims also continued to use the city as a base from which to depart on journeys to more traditional sites.5 Burchard of Mount Sion, for example, mentions that on the Feast of All Saints, 1283, he visited Mount Gilboa with many others, suggesting that this visit was part of an organized pilgrim tour.6 He also notes in his text that the Latin-European population of Acre tended to take advantage of western pilgrims, indicating that significant numbers of such travelers continued to reach the city.7 Riccoldo of Monte Croce, who visited Acre in 1288–89, mentions that he departed from the city to go to the Galilee with many Christians, attesting to the considerable number of pilgrims there, even in the very final years before its fall in 1291.8
It is equally noteworthy that in the 1260s, despite the Mamluks’ successes in restricting the Latin territories in Outremer, Acre remained economically significant, even if less so than in the years before 1250. The considerable sums of money spent to acquire land and buildings in Acre at the time serve to confirm that the city, and its port in particular, were still considered vitally important economically.9 As late as 1288, the Venetian decision to send thirty or forty metal anchors to Acre demonstrates the city’s continued commercial vitality. The anchors were presumably used to facilitate ships docking off the coast and engaging in trade, and the transport of people, goods, and animals.10 Had the Venetians thought that Acre was no longer a profitable port, such an investment would have made no sense.
Well into the later decades of the thirteenth century, Acre remained an impressive city, or at the very least, home to many remarkable buildings and neighborhoods. Focusing, for example, on its enclosing walls, it is noteworthy that between 1251 and 1254 Louis IX rebuilt the double defensive line surrounding the city.11 Just over a decade later, when Eudes arrived in Acre, these walls must have been very impressive. At least some quarters within the city were surely no less imposing. Such was the case, for example, with regard to the city’s Templar and Hospitaller compounds, which were described by the so-called Templar of Tyre:
It [the Templar compound] occupied a large site on the sea, like a castle; it had at its entry a tall, strong tower, and the wall was thick, twenty-eight feet wide. On each corner of the tower was a turret, and upon each turret was a gilded lion passant, as big as a donkey … and it was a most magnificent thing to see… . The Hospital of St. John had good quarters with towers and a very lovely palace… . They had another location, which was called the Auberge, in which was a most noble palace, very long and very lovely.12
Since these descriptions appear within the account of the final Muslim offensive on Acre, one must assume that the picture offered here was valid up to the very last Mamluk assault in the spring of 1291. Such elegant edifices would certainly have impressed Eudes and the members of his retinue during their time in the East.
Additionally, there is some evidence that new construction was undertaken, or at least planned, in different quarters of the city and that buildings were repaired during these last decades of Frankish Acre. Possible evidence of one significant project is a charter granted to the Anconitans in 1257 that shows that they were planning to build a church, a communal building, and a hostel for the accommodation of their merchants.13 Similarly, the Venetian senate decided in 1286 to ship a considerable amount of building material to Acre to renovate the fondaco and other public buildings in the areas under Venetian control.14
Eudes and his followers must have also been impressed by the variety of cultural groups whose members inhabited or visited the city. Among these were representatives of various regions in Latin Christendom, including speakers of French and Provençal as well as various Italian dialects. German speakers and English speakers were similarly represented in areas throughout the city.15 Members of different Eastern Christian groups, such as the Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Jacobite, Coptic, Nestorian, and possibly Maronite churches, were present in the city too, as was a significant Jewish community.16 While it is unclear whether there was a permanent Muslim community in thirteenth-century Acre, individual adherents of this faith were clearly present in the city. In other words, arriving in Acre, Eudes and his retinue would have encountered an environment bustling with people speaking different languages, holding different beliefs, of different origins, and with a variety of rationales for being there. Indeed, the turbulent events of the years preceding their arrival to Acre probably made this diversity even more pronounced as the city accommodated the influx of refugees from a multitude of cultures who had fled regions captured by the Mongols and later the Mamluks.
Although some clues remain, it is difficult to say much about the interactions of Eudes and his companions with members of these varied cultural communities. Starting with the Latins, it is worth noting, as Morreale and Lester do, that very few of Eudes’s bequests were made to institutions located in the sections of Acre dominated by the Italian city-states. This may reflect some kind of tension between those originating from the Kingdom of France as opposed to those from the Italian peninsula. Such tensions may have become more acrimonious because of the damages caused by the so-called War of St. Sabas, a conflict said to have originated with a struggle concerning a strategically placed house in Acre, which was owned by the monastery of St. Sabas. Street violence between the communities escalated into a war fought mainly in Acre and Tyre. The fighting in Acre, which included the use of engines hurling heavy stones, caused much damage to the city and its residents, whether or not they were directly involved in the fighting, and one may assume that it brought about considerable resentment toward the powers involved.17 Furthermore, one may suppose that this war left the part of the city closest to the port, where the Italian quarters were located, particularly scarred by the intense violence and destruction.18 This may have made institutions in this area less appealing for donations.
Another sociocultural division should be taken into account when considering Eudes’s experiences of Acre. As a cultural group, the Latin inhabitants of the city constituted two major groups: those who had just arrived from the West, either in order to settle there or for a short stay as pilgrims, crusaders, and merchant-visitors, and those who had spent a long period in Outremer, living as semipermanent residents, or who had been born there, some into families who had been in the Levant for several generations. Eudes’s Account-Inventory certainly reflects the impact of the “Outremer Franks” on Eudes’s contingent. In fact, the Account-Inventory includes a considerable number of toponyms and terms whose use was characteristic of the French of Outremer. From Eudes’s perspective we see, in short, a French view of Acre communicated in a partly local French idiom and dialect.
Additional evidence for contacts between Eudes’s retinue and local Franks can be gleaned from the names of two men found among the list of those to whom the count owed money, Salemon de Safforit and Lionnet de Tabarie. The word “Tabarie” could refer either to Tiberias, the ancient city on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, or to a village located not far from Acre; Safforit seems to refer to Saffuriya, a major Frankish site found near Nazareth. Extrapolating from these toponyms, we can probably identify two members of Frankish families who had long been established in the East. With regard to Lionnet, one should also note that in 1247 the Franks lost control of the city of Tiberias.19 Lionnet may therefore be an example of a Latin refugee who fled to Acre for safety. Another witness to the connections between Eudes and his men on the one hand and permanent Frankish residents of Acre on the other is Jaque Vidaut, a man whose name appears only once in the Account-Inventory, in an entry that indicates that Eudes was in possession of a horse that had belonged to Vidaut. The man whose name appears in the Account-Inventory is in all likelihood the same person as Jacques Vidal, also known as Jacobus Vitalis, a French knight and fief-holder in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, who both served as marshal of the kingdom and was renowned for his juridical expertise.20
It is more challenging to say anything definitive about what Eudes may have thought or felt concerning non-Latins residing in Acre or more generally in the East. One may assume, however, that—aside from a highly militant attitude toward the Muslim foe—Eudes is likely to have been at least somewhat curious about the exotic other. Evidence from John of Joinville’s text supports this hypothesis, for it shows that some knights were interested in information reaching Frankish circles concerning groups with which they had only limited nonmartial contact, such as the Mamluks.21 That Eudes would have also been interested in such matters is, of course, impossible to prove, but the presence of fabrics produced in the East—referred to in the Account-Inventory as boqueranz, cameline, or dras de tartais—is an indication that Eudes entertained at least some level of curiosity and interest in Eastern cultures in terms of their material products.22
Finally, Acre, even in its final decades as a Christian stronghold, was home to several figures who produced valuable written texts addressing a range of topics. While Eudes was first and foremost a knight rather than a man of learning, he did carry books with him. It is not unreasonable, therefore, that he would have devoted some attention to Outremer writers, or have come into contact with some of them during his sojourn. For example, at precisely the time Eudes was living in the city, the Italian jurist John of Ancona was active there, composing his Summa Iuris Canonici and, among other things, working for the Templars.23 Since the Templars figure prominently in the inventory, it is possible that John and Eudes may have actually met. This possibility tends toward probability if one takes into account that the abovementioned Jaque Vidaut, who seems to have had some kind of relationship with Eudes, was also praised by John of Ancona in his work on feudal law, thereby implying that the two were personally acquainted.24 We can thus begin to imagine a circle of men, gathering or meeting on occasion, to talk about laws of inheritance, disputed legal claims, contracts, and the like, all members of an expansive Latin cultural network that spanned the Mediterranean and whose writings, opinions, and exigencies informed practice and principle. Eudes’s Account-Inventory can therefore be understood in part as a product of just such a cultural matrix.
Additional possibilities for intellectual and cultural connections emerge with regard to Acre’s mendicant convents. The Franciscans and Dominicans had established houses in the city, and both of these served as centers of learning. Given that both houses received bequests from Eudes, it is not impossible that Eudes or some of his followers had personal connections to individual Franciscan and Dominican friars housed there. Particularly noteworthy in this regard is William of Tripoli, a member of Acre’s Dominican convent who in 1271 dedicated his Notitia de Machometo to Theobald Visconti, later Pope Gregory X.25 This is an elaborate, generally well-informed, treatise on Islam, the main parts of which are devoted to the following: Muhammad and the rise of his people; the Qur’an and its compilation; and the Qur’anic teachings regarding Christian faith.26 An analysis of this text shows that it was composed in a milieu in which other texts about Islam were written and read, and where some Latins were able to attain a high level of knowledge of Arabic and of Islamic practice and belief.27 More than a decade before Eudes reached Acre, John of Joinville seems to have been impressed by another Dominican, Yves the Breton, who not only spoke Arabic, but also, for example, brought to Acre impressions of his interactions with the head of the Syrian Nizaris.28 It thus seems quite possible that Eudes or members of his entourage would have been similarly appreciative of someone like William, whose knowledge of Arabic and Islamic traditions would have been evident in these environments. Similarly, Eudes and those with him must have relied upon Arabic-speaking contacts, probably including Latin friars and local men and women, to translate for them, to transact business locally, and to serve as cultural brokers to some extent.29
Eudes’s crusade brought him to a city of paradoxes: Acre in 1266 was almost completely engulfed by the forces of a threatening and determined enemy, which seemed to be unstoppable. And yet, it remained the destination for numerous pilgrims and retained much of its beauty and status as a trading hub. It was also the home of a varied population, some elements of which Eudes probably came to know and understand well and others that must have remained a puzzle to him. This completely new cultural world is likely to have aroused, at least to some degree, Eudes’s curiosity and might have led him to communicate with local men of letters. Be that as it may, the last months of Eudes’s life were probably full of new, powerful experiences, only some of which were directly related to the military tasks for which he had originally sailed to Acre. What it meant to him to then die in this new and different world we can only imagine.
1. Joshua Prawer, Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, trans. Gérard Nahon, 2 vols. (Paris: CNRS, 1970; repr. 2007), 2:462–66.
2. Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993–2009), 4:11.
3. Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom, 4:11; Prawer, Histoire, 2:473–74.
4. TdT, 108–11; Paul Crawford, The “Templar of Tyre”: Part III of the “Deeds of the Cypriots,” (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 50-51.
5. Fabio Romanini and Beatrice Saletti, The Pelrinages Communes, the Pardouns de Acre and the Crisis in the Crusader Kingdom: History and Texts (Padova: Libreriauniversitaria.it edizioni, 2012).
6. Burchard of Mount Sion, OP, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, ed. and trans. John R. Bartlett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 80: “cum aliis multis.”
7. Burchard of Mount Sion, OP, Descriptio, 190–92.
8. Riccoldo de Monte Croce, Pérégrination en Terre Sainte et au Proche Orient: Texte latin et traduction. Lettres sur la chute de Saint-Jean d’Acre. Traduction, ed. and trans. René Kappler, Textes et traductions des classiques français du Moyen Âge 4 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1997), 38. For more evidence on pilgrimage in the last decades of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, see Denys Pringle, Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291, Crusade Texts in Translation 23 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 9–10.
9. David Jacoby, “New Venetian Evidence on Crusader Acre,” in The Experience of Crusading, vol. 2: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, ed. Peter Edbury and Jonathan Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 244, 248; Marie-Luise Favreau-Lilie, “The Teutonic Knights in Acre after the Fall of Monfort (1271): Some Reflections,” in Outremer: Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem Presented to Joshua Prawer, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hans E. Mayer and R. C. Smail (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Institute, 1982), 275–76.
10. David Jacoby, “Crusader Acre in the Thirteenth Century: Urban Layout and Topography,” Studi medievali 20 (1979): 13.
11. Adrian J. Boas, Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East (London: Routledge, 1999), 33.
12. Crawford, The “Templar of Tyre,” 114–15; for the original French text, see TdT, 220, 222.
13. David Jacoby, “Aspects of Everyday Life in Frankish Acre,” Crusades 4 (2005): 78; David Abulafia, “The Anconitan Privileges in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Levant Trade of Ancona,” in I comuni italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme: Atti del Colloquio “The Italian Communes in the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem” (Jerusalem, May 24 – May 28, 1984), ed. Gabriella Airaldi and Benjamin Z. Kedar, Collana storica di fonti e studi 48 (Genoa: Università di Genova, Istituto di medievistica, 1986), 561.
14. Jacoby, “Crusader Acre,” 36.
15. Jonathan Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City: Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchanges in Acre, 1191–1291 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 3. For a more elaborate survey of the western population of the Latin East in general, see Laura Minervini, “Le français dans l’Orient latin (XIIIe–XIVe siècles): Éléments pour la caractérisation d’une scripta du Levant,” Revue de linguistique romane 74 (2010): 120–25.
16. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City, 3–4, 37–45. See also Minervini, “Le français,” 126–28; Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom, 4:59–60 (Maronites), 42 (Armenians), 148–49 (Jacobites), 73, 78 (Greek Orthodox), 21 (Nestorian).
17. For a survey of this war, see Thomas F. Madden, “The War of Towers: Venice and Genoa at War in Crusader Syria, 1256–8,” in Syria in Crusader Times: Conflict and Co-Existence, ed. Carole Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 211–24.
18. Jacoby, “Crusader Acre,” 29; Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom, 4:145.
19. Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom, 2:351.
20. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City, 29–30, 186 and the references there.
21. Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Garnier, 1995), 138–41.
22. See the essay by Sharon Farmer in this volume.
23. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City, 92–93, 179, 186.
24. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City, 29–30.
25. Wilhelm von Tripolis, Notitia de Machometo; De Statu Sarracenorum, ed. Peter Engels, CISC Series Latina 4 (Würzburg: Echter, 1992), 66, 71.
26. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City, 123–24.
27. Rubin, Learning in a Crusader City, 68–69, 118–29.
28. Joinville, VSL, 226–29.
29. For a considerable body of evidence concerning translators in the Latin East, see William Stephen Murrell Jr., “Dragomans and Crusaders: The Role of Translators and Translation in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean, 1098–1291” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2018).