sight of the port had to put in at Aigues-Mortes. Self-government, on the other hand, was
severely circumscribed by the presence of a resident royal governor.
For all its limitations as a physical site, Aigues-Mortes was an important outpost of
royal power in the later 13th and early 14th century. No estimate of the number of
inhabitants is absolutely trustworthy, but a resident population of 1,000–3,500 seems
reasonable. During periods of peak use, such as embarkations for crusades (1248, 1270),
this number swelled. Royal fiscal accounts show that the crown expended considerable
revenue in keeping the walls in repair and the harbor open. High officials in the
government may even have entertained the possibility of diverting a freshwater river to
Aigues-Mortes, since the natural water supply was insufficient for a large town.
In the course of the 14th century, older and better ports on the Mediterranean coast
either came under French rule or succumbed to more effective royal control. Since the
oligarchies of these towns had always resented the favored status of Aigues-Mortes and
since the crown, once it established effective control, no longer doubted its ability to
work through these oligarchies whenever it needed to discharge obligations that required
the use of ports, Aigues-Mortes gradually decreased in importance as a commercial
center and as an object of special royal encouragement. It is no doubt due to this decline
that the extensive city walls and fortifications of Aigues-Mortes remain largely intact and
that the original grid plan of the town is still respected. Together, they make Aigues-
Mortes one of the finest surviving examples of 13th-century fortified town planning.
William Chester Jordan
[See also: CRUSADES; LOUIS IX]
Inventaire général des monuments et richesses artistiques de la France. Gard. Canton d’Aigues-
Mortes. 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1973.
Jordan, William. “Supplying Aigues-Mortes for the Crusade of 1248: The Problem of Restructuring
Trade.” In Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Joseph R.Strayer, ed.
William Jordan, Bruce McNab, and Teofilo Ruiz. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976,
pp. 165–72.
——. Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979.
Salch, Charles-Laurent. L’atlas des villes et villages fortifiés en France. Strasbourg: Pubitotal,
1987, pp. 76–85.
Sournia, Bernard. “Les fortifications d’Aigues-Mortes.” Congrès archéologique (Pays d’Arles)
134(1976):9–26.
AIMOIN DE FLEURY
(ca. 960–ca. 1010). The son of an aristocratic family in Périgord, Aimoin entered the
Benedictine monastery of Fleury-sur-Loire as a child and took monastic vows between
969 and 978. His major writings made important contributions to the development of
historiography and hagiography in medieval France. The Historia (Gesta) Francorum is a
history of the Franks from their beginnings to Pepin the Short, written with the purpose of
supporting the Capetian claim to the throne and utilized later by the authors of the
chronicles of Saint-Denis and the Grandes chroniques de France. Aimoin’s Vita
The Encyclopedia 27