French Acre

This chapter examines the language and landscapes of the Account-Inventory of Eudes of Nevers. Previous studies of Eudes’s Account-Inventory have emphasized the western elements and actors mentioned in the texts with very little acknowledgement of the Outremer setting. However, closer scrutiny of the rouleaux situates these texts firmly within the context of Crusader Acre. Unlike written products crafted solely to allow the reader to engage with and linger over the written word, these records were ancillary to the main proceedings. They were created to accompany the actions of those who carried them out. In this way, the rolls functioned as an aide-compte, that is, as an aid for accounting, and an aide-memoire, a memory device. Just as the rouleaux allow us to reconstruct the actions of the main figures of Eudes’s retinue, they also render evidence of the landscapes and cultural environments where those events transpired. The chapter then looks at the world of Acre, which is visible in two ways: first, in the location-specific institutions and vocabularies listed within; and second, through the Outremer-inflected language and writing styles used to describe the count’s final deeds and to instruct how his affairs were to be settled.