Account Books as Media of Corporate Self-Narration: Accounting for Money and Salvation in a Cosmopolitan Port City

Abstract While missionaries were supposed to organise their economic activities within the specific normative framework of their order and the Roman Church, in the absence of substantial funding from abroad, their survival depended on their ability to use local economic opportunities. The account books of the Discalced Carmelites in Basra offer the unique opportunity to gain insights into the economy of a small community of mendicant friars in a port city on the margins of the Ottoman Empire. They indicate that the friars were rather successful in setting up a modest convent economy. However, this came at the price of compromising the norms that limited their economic activities. Such contradictions complicate the analysis of the books which were not a simple reflection of the economic realities. Instead, this article uncovers the norms that regulated accounting against the backdrop of the local entanglements of the friars. The friars recorded their transactions selectively, or at least in ways that brought them closer to the norms of their order. Their recording practices may be considered “a technique of ascetism and government.” Together with the convent chronicle, the account books were the principal medium of a corporate self-narration focused on constructing a memoria of observance.