Account Rolls of Medieval Savoy: Example of the Castellany of Evian-Féternes in 1299–1300
Account Rolls of Medieval Savoy: Example of the Castellany of Evian-Féternes in 1299–1300 Marjorie Burghart École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales- CIHAM UMR 5648 The medieval principality of Savoy left historians an outstanding legacy: the corpus of account rolls of its castellanies, the base administrative units of medieval Savoy. With more than 20,000 accounts from the mid-thirteenth century to 1500,1 this collection reflects the many competencies of the castellan, the official of the count in charge of a castellany2 — maintenance of the castle and military duties, of course, but also collection of the various feudal revenues, repair of the banal buildings (ovens, mills, etc.) or other equipment (bridges, fish ponds, etc.), and judicial functions. The detailed accounts of those activities by the castellan breathe life into our picture of the communities, hamlets, villages, and towns. The importance of the account rolls as a source for historians has long been understood,3 but the study is complicated by the division in several archives of a corpus once kept together in the capital of the principality of Savoy.4 The castellanie.net project, aimed at digitizing the rolls of 1 This estimate was given in Robert-Henri Bautier et Janine Sornay, Les sources de l’histoire économique et sociale du Moyen Age, Provence Comtat venaissin Dauphiné Etats de la Maison de Savoie (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1971), 340–41. 2 On the castellans and officers of the count, see Guido Castelnuovo, Ufficiali e gentiluomini: la società politica sabauda nel tardo medioevo (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1994). See also Etienne Dullin, Les châtelains dans les domaines de la Maison de Savoie en deçà des Alpes (Chambéry: Grenoble, 1911).
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