3
Crusading in the Mid-Thirteenth Century
Eudes of Nevers (b. 1230; d. August 7, 1266) was the son of Hugh IV, duke of Burgundy (d. 1272), and Yolande of Dreux (d. 1248) (see appendix 1 and figures 13.1–13.2). He could trace his lineage through multiple crusader families going back generations.1 In 1248, Eudes married Mahaut II of Bourbon (1234/35–62), who had inherited the county of Nevers through her mother and who also boasted a crusader lineage in her own right.2 Once he was married, Eudes took the title of count of Nevers while Mahaut retained her title to Bourbon. Eudes’s great-grandfather, Duke Hugh III of Burgundy, had taken part in the Third Crusade and died in Acre on August 25, 1192. His grandfather, Eudes III of Burgundy, joined the Fifth Crusade and died on July 6, 1218. And his father had taken part in the so-called Barons’ Crusade of 1239 and joined Louis IX’s first expedition east in 1248. In 1262, Hugh IV took a final crusade vow to aid Baldwin II in reclaiming the Latin Empire of Constantinople.3 Whether for reasons of age or ailing health, Hugh commuted his vow and allowed his son Eudes to serve in his stead.4 Familial and political commitments thus guided Eudes of Nevers to take the cross and propelled him to Acre.5
By the autumn of 1265, the situation in the Kingdom of Jerusalem had deteriorated considerably. Four years earlier, in 1261, Michael VIII Palaeologus (r. 1261–82) succeeded in taking the Latin Empire of Constantinople and restored Greek rule to the Byzantine capital. At the same time, a perceived two-pronged offensive had begun to compromise what remained of the principalities of Outremer along the Syrian coast. To the north, the Mongol armies had begun to move southward across Anatolia. To the south, the Mamluk general Baybars led his Muslim forces in a series of effective and crushing campaigns to take over crusader castles and towns along the littoral.6 In response, Pope Clement IV (r. 1265–68) began a preaching campaign to raise a new general crusade (passage général or passagium generale) and to recruit the kings of France and England along with other major barons to undertake a cooperative and jointly funded expedition to the East in the service of Christendom.7
With little fanfare, on October 20, 1265, Eudes departed for the Holy Land at the head of a regiment of knights, what some historians have referred to as independent crusaders.8 His expedition left just before contingents of barons and retainers joined Charles of Anjou, who marched through the Piedmont to Rome, in a series of campaigns in Italy that would entangle the French and Flemish in the lands of the Regno—that is, southern Italy and Sicily—for generations to come.9 Eudes’s expedition had the support of both Pope Clement IV and the French king, Louis IX. Indeed, Eudes’s journey anticipated Louis IX’s second and final crusade, which would depart for Tunis five years later, in March 1270. Eudes’s presence in Syria responded to the need to shore up defenses in and around Acre and Jaffa and to deliver funds to support what was left of crusader Outremer. His presence in the East extended the French crown’s commitment to maintain a foothold in Syria and in Greece. Jean Richard identified Eudes’s expedition as the first “passage particulier,” that is, “an operation limited in effect and objectives, with the goal of reinforcing and consolidating the Christian position in the East.”10
Eudes traveled with Érard of Vallery and Érard of Nanteuil, and together they led fifty knights “in the service of God [au service de Dieu].”11 In letters to the pope and to the king, this lordly contingent referred to themselves as “chevaliers pelerins,” or knightly pilgrims.12 Once they arrived in the Holy Land, they were to serve in aid to the French king’s forces stationed in Acre. Sometimes known as the stipendarii, this was a permanent garrison of salaried knights who had remained in Acre to shore up the defense of the city and to hold the Holy Land following Louis IX’s first failed crusade (1248–54).13 In 1254, as he departed to return home to France, the king put Geoffrey of Sergines “the elder,” one of his closest crusade companions, in command of the first contingent of one hundred knights, who remained in the East following the royal campaign.14 Many of those serving in this cohort did so as milites ad terminum, that is, knights who performed service for a limited period of time and who often provided for their own maintenance.15 Geoffrey of Sergines the elder was the first to hold the appointment of “captain,” and combined that post with the seneschalsy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a royal administrative position that gave him the authority to govern within the city. Geoffrey served in both capacities until his death in 1269.16 Following his return to France, Louis IX “spent an average of four thousand pounds tournois per year from 1254 to 1270” in support of the stipendarii, who remained in the East, headquartered in Acre.17 In 1265, Eudes’s expedition coincided with an additional set of payments transferred from the crown, which Geoffrey’s son, Geoffrey of Sergines the younger, and Érard of Vallery oversaw.18
It was in this context of crusade service, at the age of thirty-six, that Eudes of Nevers died in Acre on August 7, 1266. He and his family were at the height of aristocratic prestige and connection. In June 1265 his eldest daughter, Yolande (d. 1280), married King Louis IX’s youngest son, Jean Tristan (d. 1270), just as a new Mediterranean-wide crusade campaign was being planned.19 Three years later, in 1268, Eudes’s second daughter, Marguerite (d. 1308), married the king’s youngest brother, Charles of Anjou (d. 1285), and became Countess of Anjou, queen of Sicily, and (titular) queen of Jerusalem. The connections with the Capetians and the crown of Sicily would persist for generations in titles and through objects passed among heirs. These connections also go some way toward explaining how and why Eudes’s final Account-Inventory made its way to Paris. At the time of Eudes’s death, his executors in Acre finalized his accounts and recorded his inventory as part of the process of disbursing the final payments for his debts and overseeing the partial liquidation of his movable goods. They also oversaw Eudes’s final bequests, both charitable and personal, and orchestrated the care of his body, the embalming of his heart, and his final burial. His executors and legal representatives included one of Eudes’s household knights, Hugh of Augerant, and his companion, Érard of Vallery, who was represented in the initial transactions by Geoffrey of Sergines the younger. Although Eudes made provisions for his goods in Acre—offering instructions, referred to in our text as lais (F. legs)—no formal testament appears to exist. Despite a growing interest on the part of the crusading nobility in creating final testaments before departure, Eudes’s death, it seems, was unexpected, something no one, perhaps especially Eudes, had prepared for fully.20
Eudes’s inventory offers a rare glimpse into the accoutrements and objects a crusader of stature carried with him to the East in the later part of the thirteenth century. It illuminates the kinds of obligations such men took on and the ways they provided for their retinue—the many layers of men (and possibly a few women) in their service. It details how such men dressed and maintained themselves, their servants, their quarters, and their kitchens. The inventory too sheds light on how they entertained and engaged in personal and public acts of diplomacy, devotion, and aristocratic self-presentation, as well as the many ways that wealth was made portable in the form of coinage, clothing, jewels, and plate. The surviving five rouleaux reflect the lively and lived documentary and fiscal culture of crusader Acre, which employed multiple strategies for record-keeping, used various currencies of account, and relied upon the copious circulation of people and goods gathered together. It is thus a rare administrative survival—one written in Acre, in Old French, and carried to, and finally archived in, Paris. As a textual object, it represents relationships that were far more complex and intertwined than have previously been considered.21 The clerks or scribes gave careful attention to the payments and amounts recorded, which are given in three different currencies: local bezants, the money of account in Acre; pounds tournois, the currency of the royal domain of France; and the silver mark sterling, the international money of account (see figures 8–10).22 The precise enumeration of goods and services and the checking and rechecking of summary totals and values as embedded in the text’s repetitions is indicative of a set of individuals and institutions present and at work with different, and at times competing, interests, all of which made up the crusading world of a great French baron. Moreover, the Account-Inventory offers us access inside the chambers, armories, kitchens, and religious spaces of a crusader’s household during the final decades of Latin rule in the East, revealing the lived material world of crusader Outremer.
1. On the crusader lineage of the counts of Nevers, see Elizabeth Siberry, “The Crusading Counts of Nevers,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 34 (1990): 64–70; Anne E. Lester, “Crusading as a Religious Movement: Families, Community, and Lordship in a Vernacular Frame,” in Between Orders and Heresy: Rethinking Medieval Religious Movements, ed. Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane and Anne E. Lester (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), 127–69. Lespinasse, Le Nivernais, vol. 2, offers the most in-depth narrative of the Nevers family’s crusade participation. See also Philippe Murat, “La croisade en Nivernais: Transfert de propriété et lutte d’influence,” in Le concile de Clermont de 1095 et l’appel à la croisade: Actes du Colloque Universitaire International de Clermont-Ferrand (23–25 juin 1995), Publications de l’École française de Rome 236 (Rome: École Français de Rome, 1997), 295–312.
2. Lespinasse, Le Nivernais, 2:261–62; and Constance Brittain Bouchard, “Three Counties, One Lineage, and Eight Heiresses: Nevers, Auxerre, and Tonnerre, Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries,” Medieval Prosopography 31 (2016): 25–46.
3. The crusading commitments of the dukes of Burgundy are detailed in Ernst Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la race capétienne (Dijon: Darantiere, 1885–1905), vols. 4–5. For Hugh IV’s role in the Barons’ Crusade and with Louis IX, see Michael Lower, The Barons’ Crusade: A Call to Arms and Its Consequences (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). See Rutebeuf’s poems, below.
4. See Alexandre Teulet et al., eds., Layettes du Trésor des chartes (Paris: H. Plon, 1863–1909), 3:537–38, no. 4619 (July 6, 1260); Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, 5:72–73. Hugh IV continued to harbor ambitions in the East, both in Greece and in the Regno. In the months after Eudes’s departure for Acre, Hugh met with Baldwin II and began arrangements to aid him in reconquering the Latin Empire in exchange for the principality of Thessalonica, yet nothing came of such plans. See the comments in Jean Dunbabin, The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 1266–1305 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 139–41; and Jean Richard, Les ducs de Bourgogne et de la formation du duché, du XIe au XIVe siècle (Dijon: Bernigaud et Privat, 1954), 294–305.
5. For this chronology, see Petit, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, vols. 4–5. See the comments below on Rutebeuf’s poem “La complainte doutremeir.”
6. For the general context informing the renewed crusade call in 1265, see Jean Richard, Saint Louis: Roi d’une France féodale, soutien de la Terre sainte (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 451–574; Richard, “La croisade de 1270, premier ‘passage général’?,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 133 (1989): 510–23; Peter Jackson, “The Crisis in the Holy Land in 1260,” English Historical Review 95 (1980): 481–513; and Jackson, The Mongols and the West: 1221–1410, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2018); Xavier Hélary, “Les rois de France et la Terre Sainte de la Croisade de Tunis à la chute d’Acre (1270–1291),” Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France 118 (2005): 21–104; Hélary, La dernière croisade: Saint Louis à Tunis (1270) (Paris: Perrin, 2016); Michael Lower, “Conversion and St Louis’s Last Crusade,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 58 (2007): 211–31; Lower, The Tunis Crusade of 1270: A Mediterranean History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
7. Léon Borrelli de Serres, “Compte d’une mission de prédication pour secours à la Terre Sainte (1265),” Mémoires de la société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France 30 (1903): 243–80, and Richard, “La croisade de 1270.” These events compiled in succession: July 25, 1261, Constantinople fell to the Greeks; March 24, 1267, the Paris Assembly convened, and Louis IX accepted the crusader’s cross from Simon of Brie, the Franciscan cardinal of St. Cecilia; 1267 the Treaty of Viterbo in which the Latin emperor, Baldwin II of Courtenay, transferred suzerainty over the Princedom of Achaea to Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily. For the transfer of titles within the Latin Empire, see Filip Van Tricht, The Latin “Renovatio” of Byzantium: The Empire of Constantinople (1204–1228) (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 207–10. Several of Rutebeuf’s poems translated below were written in direct response to these events.
8. On independent crusaders, that is, expeditions that were not part of larger and more coordinated or general efforts led by kings and popes, see Fordham University’s Independent Crusaders Mapping Project, March 30, 2018, https://research.library.fordham.edu/ddp_archivingdossier/5/. For aid to the Holy Land in 1265, see Borelli de Serres, “Compte d’une mission de prédication.”
9. Dunbabin, The French in the Kingdom of Sicily; and Norman Housley, The Italian Crusades: The Papal-Angevin Alliance and the Crusades against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).
10. Richard, “La croisade de 1270,” 515.
11. Jonathan Riley-Smith, “The Crown of France and Acre, 1254–1291,” in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, ed. Daniel H. Weiss and Lisa Mahoney (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 51–52n65, citing: TdT, 104 (para. 103 [339]); and “L’Estoire de Eracles,” RHC 2:454. Érard of Nanteuil is difficult to identify. Most likely a relative of Philip of Nanteuil, the family probably hailed from the region for the Ainse at Nanteuil-la-Fosse. A possible seal survives that may be connected to Érard of Nanteuil, on a charter in Paris, AN, S//5035 no. 39 (1256), available at Sigilla, http://www.sigilla.org/acte/an-paris-s-5035-ndeg-39-ii-48841.
12. Gustav Servois, “Emprunts de Saint Louis en Palestine et en Afrique,” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 4 (1858): 129.
13. For the garrison in Acre, see Christopher J. Marshall, “The French Regiment in the Latin East, 1254–91,” Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989): 301–7. On the terms used and stipendarii specifically, see Riley-Smith, “The Crown of France and Acre,” 51–52nn66–67; and Pierre-Vincent Claverie, ed., L’ordre du Temple dans l’Orient des croisades (Brussels: De Boeck, 2014).
14. Joinville refers to Geoffrey as “a good knight and preudhomme.” Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. J. Monfrin (Paris: Garnier, 1995) [hereafter Joinville, VSL, cited by paragraph number]. Joinville’s phrase is “preudommes chevaliers”: “tiex chevaliers soloit l’en appeler bons chevalier. Le non de ceulz qui estoient chevaliers entour le roy sont tiex: mon seigneurs Geoffroy de Sargines, mon seigneur Mahi de Marley, mon seigneur Phelippe de Nanteul, mon seigneur Hymbert de Biaujeu.” Joinville, VSL, para. 173, see also paras. 308–9, 369, 378, 438, and 571. For the situation in the East at this time, see Servois, “Emprunts de Saint Louis,” and Riley-Smith, “The Crown of France and Acre.”
15. As such they were not always part of a specific retinue, but had to maintain themselves and their own horses, squires, and pages. See Jochen G. Schenk, “Forms of Lay Association with the Order of the Temple,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 100–103; and Alan Forey, “Milites ad terminum in the Military Orders during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in The Military Orders, vol. 4: On Land and By Sea, edited by Judi Upton-Ward (London: Routledge, 2016), 23–30.
16. See Riley-Smith, “The Crown of France and Acre,” 47. The position of seneschal of Arce was sometimes referred to as bailli or bailiff. In short, he was the highest administrative official working on behalf of the royal government in Acre.
17. William Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 78; Riley-Smith, “The Crown of France and Acre”; and Joseph R. Strayer, “The Crusades of Louis IX,” in Strayer, Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 159–92. See also Borelli de Serres, “Comptes d’une mission de prédication,” 255n6.
18. These transactions were uncovered and discussed in Servois, “Emprunts de Saint Louis.” For the papal letters addressing funds in support of Acre and the Holy Land, see Teulet, Layettes, 4:149 and 163–64; for the transfer of funds and loans by Érard of Vallery, 4:144 (July 1265), 4:230 (July 7, 1267, Acre), and involving Geoffrey of Sergines, 4:155–56 (October 29, 1265, Acre), 4:228–29 (June 30, 1267, Acre). For the financial and military situation in the Holy Land in the later thirteenth century, see also Judith Bronstein, The Hospitallers in the Holy Land: Financing the Latin East, 1187–1274 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005).
19. Lespinasse, Le Nivernais, 2:267–70, 287–93.
20. It was not uncommon for some crusaders to draw up their will or testament at the last moment, or at the moment of death. Guy IV of Forez had done so as he lay dying in Brindisi in 1241; see Lester, “Crusading as a Religious Movement,” 137. Likewise, Hugh of Neville and Edward I of England both wrote or dictated wills while in Acre in 1269 and 1272, respectively. See below.
21. For a marvelous analysis of a similar sort of “living text,” see the discussion of Abraham’s list in Elizabeth A. Lambourn, Abraham’s Luggage: A Social Life of Things in the Medieval Indian Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). An Account-Inventory is also, in its most basic form, a set of lists. Much has been written about inventories, the process of inventorying, and lists and list-making. For some of this scholarship, see the articles collected on the DALME website: https://dalme.org/project/bibliography/. For the poetic and political potential of lists, see also Claire Angotti, Pierre Chastang, Vincent Debiais and Laura Kendrick, eds. Le pouvoir des listes au moyen âge: Écritures de la liste (Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2019); and Katherine C. Little, “The Politics of Lists,” Exemplaria 31 (2019): 117–28.
22. On the currencies and their values at the time, see Chazaud, “Inventaire,” 174–76. More broadly, see Gustave Schlumberger, Numismatiques de l’Orient latin (Paris: Leroux, 1878); David Michael Metcalf, Coinage of the Crusades and the Latin East in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2nd ed. (London: Royal Numismatic Society and Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, 1995); and Alan M. Stahl, “The Circulation of European Coinage in the Crusader States,” in The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades, ed. Vladimir P. Goss and Christin V. Bornstein, Studies in Medieval Culture 21 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986), 85–102.