Sponsored by The Medieval World Seminar (Johns Hopkins University)
and DALME (Harvard University)
Friday, March 26, 11:30-13:00 EDT |15:30-17:00 BST | 16:30-18:00 | CEST | 17:30-19:00 | IDT
VIA ZOOM
Led by
Anne E. Lester, Johns Hopkins University
Laura K. Morreale, Georgetown University (Affiliated)
Moderated by
Daniel Lord Smail, Harvard University
This symposium brings together the foremost scholars in the field of material history and documentary practices of the Outremer to discuss the world of crusading things recorded in the Account-Inventory of Eudes of Nevers. Count Eudes of Nevers, son of the Duke of Burgundy, died in Acre on 7 August 1266, leaving in his wake a vast array of objects and obligations. Between August and October of the same year, three companion knights who served as his legal representatives oversaw the creation of an Account-Inventory ranging over five parchment rolls and written in Old French. The interlocking texts that make up the Account-Inventory open a window onto crusader life in Acre, including, debts owed, the pay rendered to knights, sergeants, and servants, and the numerous things — jewels, armor, cloth, textiles, dishes, plates, books, relics, chapels, foodstuffs, banners, horses, and clothing — that a crusading count possessed and gave away on the day he was alive and dead. Taken together the rolls evoke the material Outremer in unprecedented detail. Their composition, use, and circulation provoke a cascade of questions about diplomacy, trade, personal connections, the circulation of goods, the crusader Mediterranean, death, and remembrance. The symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to read, to comment on, and to think together about new ways of conceiving of the French Outremer in its material form and the histories that material objects reveal.
The scholarly discussion showcases a new text edition and examines the methodology of material history, the study of materiality, and the practice of documentary archaeology.
A new edition and translation of the Account-Inventory as well as an accompanying commentary will be made available to participants upon registration.
