Reviewed by Frederic M. Stiner, Jr. Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
From the Thirteenth Century onwards, the city of Mons has had the good fortune to preserve an unbroken series of city records. The Royal Academy of Belgium has made a large contribution to scholar¬ship by making available two volumes concerning these records, covering 1279 to 1356. This set of books transcribes the most im¬portant documents of Mons during that period.
Tome 1 has an extensive Introduction to the way the records have been transcribed and handled. This introduction is followed by three sections: Comptes de la massarderie, Comptes annexes, and Comptes échevinaux. The accounts of the public officials, massards (“le receveur communal”), are 47 scrolls and the first account book.
These cover 1289 to 1338. Comptes annexes are eleven sets of records from approximately 1279 to 1334 — but not all series in this collection cover this range. These records do cover a number of municipal items, including construction, borrowing, rents, tallies for assessments and other activities. Comptes échevinaux are three series of accounts from 1309-1348, both scrolls and books. The échevin in Belgium was a municipal magistrate assisting a mayor.
Tome 2 is an exhaustive set of three indexes for names, things and organizations, and money found in Tome 1. Some authorities con¬sider French before 1350 to be Old French. Others feel the change to Middle French occurred later. In any event, the reader of the books should be aware that usage and spelling differ within the records as well as from modern spelling and usage. A glossary gives some guidance to the language spoken north of the Loire, which differs somewhat from the French language as most foreigners have learned French. This glossary is especially useful for interpretation of unusual and various spellings used in the records over the years.
General features increase the usefulness of the book. First, the lines of the text are numbered on each page. Second, the passages which are likely to be of interest to an historian are indicated by parentheses. Third, the typeface is large. Finally, the paper is heavy, hopefully to last as long as the original documents did.
These books should interest students of this time period, which is contemporaneous with the first Italian double-entry bookkeeping. A governmental specialist might find these books useful for under-standing European municipal records before double-entry account¬ing made an impact.
