Literature in Frankish Greece 299
However, even if oral performance was the rule, and the Chansonnier was
above all a concrete act of prestige surely designed primarily for show rather
than practical use, one must conclude that there was enough of an audience
to read a book of songs as well. Literacy among the knightly classes of the 13th
century is hard to assess and probably varied widely; the far more plentiful
evidence from western Europe suggests that the increasing use of the writ-
ten vernacular favoured a spread in vernacular literacy and that most knights
would have had the ability to read at least.32 With more specific regard to the
Latin East in the 13th century, it is likewise clear that not all knights neglected
the liberal arts in writing. Eudes, Count of Navarre (the son of William’s friend
Hugh iv of Burgundy) died in Acre in 1266 shortly after arriving in Outremer;
he had in his possession on his death a collection of books including the
romance of Loherain , a “romanz de la terre d’outre mer” (perhaps a vernacular
history of the Holy Land) and also a chansonnier. Closer to home, the library
of Leonardo da Veroli, William de Villehardouin’s chancellor for some 17 years,
contained several French vernacular romances. An appreciation of romance
would logically form part of the cultural nexus outlined above.33 Moreover,
there is a strong suggestion that William at least was able to read, for he is pre-
sented in the Chronicle of the Morea as personally consulting the “Book of Law”
as part of the enquiry into the inheritance of Marguerite of Akova in the 1270s.34
The two songs presented here by William in his Chansonnier are among its
unica.35 Neither is complete, as the illuminated initial, which probably con-
tained a miniature image of William on the model of the images of similarly
high-ranking trouvères that have survived elsewhere in the Chansonnier, has
been torn out, carrying with it the top left-hand corner of the page. This muti-
lation affects the first few lines of both music and text of “Loiaus amours” and
the last line of “Au novel tans”, which is on the reverse side of the page. In addi-
tion, in the case of both songs, only the first verse was written in, with space
32 See, for example, Franz H. Bauml, “Varieties and Consequences of Medieval Literacy
and Illiteracy,” Speculum 55 (1980), 239–44; Andrew Taylor, “The Myth of the Minstrel
Manuscript,” Speculum 66 (1991), 50–51; Ralph V. Turner, “The Miles Literatus in Twelfth-
and Thirteenth-Century England,” American Historical Review 83 (1978), 931–42; Joachim
Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. Thomas
Dunlap (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 426–35.
33 Jacoby, “Knightly Values,” 166; Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third
Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 (Cambridge, 2005), 1:356–59.
34 French Chronicle §§519–21; Greek Chronicle vv. 7567–90, especially 7589.
35 The lyrics of both are in Jean Buchon, Recherches et matériaux pour servir à une histoire
de la domination française aux xiiie, xive et Xve siècles dans les provinces démembrés de
l’empire grec a la suite de la quatrième croisade (Paris, 1840), p. 419. Both songs have been
edited by John Haines, “Songbook,” p. 109.