Outremer Subjects

This chapter details how the Account-Inventory makes reference to a vast array of individuals in Eudes of Nevers’s employ and within his household. Paramount among them are three knights, two of whom accompanied him to the East and who together coordinated the assessment and appraisal of his goods and oversaw the payments and disbursal of his wealth both in cash and in kind: Érard of Vallery, Geoffrey of Sergines the younger, and Hugh of Augerant. Surprisingly, little scholarship has focused on these men, although they played critical roles in the business of the Holy Land and the Mediterranean-wide crusades planned between 1261 and 1272. Rutebeuf, the vernacular poet active around the court of Louis IX, offered detailed contemporary poetic portraits of Eudes, count of Nevers, as well as Geoffrey of Sergines the elder and Érard of Vallery. Rutebeuf’s poems offer valuable contemporary observations and commentary on the actions, ambitions, and legacies of Eudes and those within his circle. The chapter also considers two other men who played an official role in Eudes’s household. Étienne le Clerc is mentioned seven times in the rolls and served as a clerk or cleric in Eudes’s household, while Guillaume le Chapelain is mentioned once and must have been a priest, most likely Eudes’s household chaplain.