Anne E. Lester and Laura K. Morreale, A Crusader’s Death and Life in Acre: The 1266 Account-Inventory of Eudes of Nevers. Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultures. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2025, xv, 282 pp.

This book marks the culmination of a fascinating project which set out to examine a group of parchment rolls drawn up in the summer of 1266 following the death of the crusader Count Eudes of Nevers. Created in the city of Acre in the kingdom of Jerusalem, these documents facilitated the process of wrapping up Eudes’ affairs, and they comprise a series of inventories written in Old French detailing matters such as: the count’s property and personal effects at the time of his death, his debts, the payments due to his entourage, and the subsequent sale of his goods. A Crusader’s Death and Life in Acre is the book resulting from this project and it has a fourfold purpose. The first section provides an edition and translation of these parchment rolls. The second part offers commentary and analysis on their content and composition. The third provides editions, translations and discussion on other related primary sources created during this same era, specifically: a cluster of poems penned by the acerbic writer Rutebeuf and then two wills written-up for crusaders in the Latin East. Finally, the fourth element elaborates these documents’ wider context through the provision of a series of short supplementary scholarly articles covering related matters. Across this multi-faceted study, Lester and Morreale are the principal authors, although other scholars (Latowsky and Smith) either produced – or worked with the main authors to produce – many of the supplementary sources (the poetry and the wills) while the short articles contained in the final section were written by other collaborating historians.