inconsistencies, its errors of chronology and topography, its poetical colour, and its living descriptions of battles. Kugler, however, regards Albert as a copyist, somewhat in the manner of Tudebod, of an unknown writer of value, who belonged to the Lotharingian ranks during the Crusade, and settled in the kingdom of Jerusalem afterwards (see Kugler, Albert von Aachen, Stuttgart, 1885).[1] In the Chanson des chétifs and the Chanson d’Antioche the legend of the Crusades more certainly finds its expression. The former, composed at Antioch about 1130, contained an idolization of the Hermit: the latter is a poem written about 1180 by Graindor of Douai, who used as his basis the verses of the crusader Richard (see the edition of P. Paris, 1848). It shows the growth of the legend that Graindor regards the vision of the Hermit as responsible for the Crusade, and makes the Crusade led by him precede, and indeed occasion by its failure, the meeting at Clermont (which is dated in May instead of November). Into the legendary overgrowth of the First Crusade we cannot here enter any further[2]; but it is perhaps worth while to mention that the French legend of the Third Crusade equally perverted the truth, making Richard I. return home in disgrace, while Philip Augustus stays, captures Damascus and mortally wounds Saladin (cf. G. Paris, L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, Paris, 1897; Introduction).
(d) William of Tyre is the scientific historian and rationalizer, weaving into a harmonious account, which was followed by historians for centuries, the sober accounts of eye-witnesses and the picturesque details of the saga—with somewhat of a bias towards the latter in regard to the First Crusade. He was a native of Palestine, born about 1130, and educated in the West. On his return he was happy in winning the good opinion of Amalric I.; he was made first canon and then archdeacon of Tyre, and tutor of the future Baldwin IV. (1170); while on Baldwin’s accession he became chancellor of the kingdom and archbishop of Tyre (1174–1175). He was a man often employed on missions and negotiations, and as chancellor he had in his care the archives of the kingdom. His temper was naturally that of a trimmer; and he had thus many qualifications for the writing of well-informed and unbiassed history. He knew Greek and Arabic; and he was well acquainted with the affairs of Constantinople, to which he went at least twice on political business, and with the history of the Mahommedan powers, on which he had written a work (now lost) at the command of Amalric. It was Amalric also who set him to write the history of the Crusades which we still possess (in twenty-two books, with a fragment of a twenty-third)—the Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum. He wrote the book at different times between 1170 and 1183, when it abruptly ends, and its author as abruptly disappears from sight. The book falls into two parts, the first (books i.-xv.) derivative, the second (books xvi.-xxiii.) original. In the second part he had his own knowledge of events and the information of his contemporaries as his source: in the first he used the same authorities which we still possess—the Gesta, Fulcher, and Albert of Aix—in somewhat of an eclectic spirit, choosing now here, now there, according as he could best weave a pleasant narrative, but not according to any real critical principle. His book thus begins to be a real authority only from the date of the Second Crusade onwards; but the perfection of his form (for he is one of the greatest stylists of the middle ages) and the prestige of his position conspired to make his book the one authority for the whole history of the first century of the Crusades. Nor was he (apart from his reception of legendary elements into his narrative) unworthy of the honour in which he was held; for he is really a great historian, in the form of his matter and in his conception of his subject—diligent, impartial, well-informed and interesting, if somewhat rhetorical in style and vague in chronology.
[During the middle ages his work was current in a French translation, known as the Chronique d’outre-mer, or the Livre or Roman d’Éracles (so called from the reference at the beginning to the emperor Heraclius). This translation also contained a continuation by various hands down to 1277; while besides the continuation embedded in the Livre d’Éracles, there are separate continuations, of the nature of independent works, by Ernoul and Bernard the Treasurer. These latter cover the period from 1183 to 1228; and of the two Ernoul’s account seems primary, while that of Bernard is in large part a mere copy of Ernoul. But the whole subject of the continuators of William of Tyre is dubious.]
To the Western authorities for the First Crusade must be added the Eastern—Byzantine, Arabic and Armenian. Of these the Byzantine authority, the Alexiad of Anna Comnena, is most important, partly from the position of the authoress, partly from the many points of contact between the Byzantine empire and the crusaders. Anna’s narrative both furnishes a useful corrective of the prejudiced Western accounts of Alexius, and serves to bring Bohemund forward into his proper prominence. The Armenian view of the First Crusade and of Baldwin’s principality of Edessa is presented in the Armenian Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. There is little in Arabic bearing on the First Crusade: the Arabic authorities only begin to be of value with the rise of the atabegs of Mosul (c. 1127). But Kemal-ud-din’s History of Aleppo (composed in the 13th century) contains some details on the history of the First Crusade; and the Vie d’Ousāma (the autobiography of a sheik at Caesarea in northern Syria, edited and paraphrased by Derenbourg in the Publications de l’École des langues orientales vivantes) presents the point of view of an Arab whose life covered the first century of the Crusades (1095–1188).
For the Second Crusade the primary authority in the West is the work of Odo de Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII regis Francorum in Orientem. Odo was a monk attached by Suger to Louis VII. during the Second Crusade; and he wrote home to Suger during the Crusade seven short letters, afterwards pieced together in a single work. The Gesta Friderici Primi of Otto of Freising (who joined in the Second Crusade) gives some details from the German point of view (i. c. 44 sqq.). The former is supplemented by the letters of Louis VII. to Suger; the latter by the letters of Conrad III. to Wibald, abbot of Stablo and Corvey. The Byzantine point of view is presented in the Ἐπιτομή of Cinnamus, the private secretary of Manuel, who continued the Alexiad of Anna Comnena in a work describing the reigns of John and Manuel. It is from the Second Crusade that William of Tyre, representing the attitude of the Franks of Jerusalem, begins to be a primary authority; while on the Mahommedan side a considerable authority emerges in Ibn Athīr. His history of the Atabegs was written about 1200, and it presents in a light favourable to Zengi and Nureddin, but unfavourable to Saladin (who thrust Nureddin’s descendants aside), the history of the great Mahommedan power which finally crushed the kingdom of Jerusalem.[3]
Side by side with Beha-ud-dīn’s life of Saladin, Ibn Athīr’s work is the most considerable historical record written by the Arabs. Generally speaking the Arabic writings are late in point of date, and cold and jejune in style; while it must also be remembered that they are set religious works written to defend Islam. On the other hand they are generally written by men of affairs—governors, secretaries or ambassadors; and a fatalistic temper leads their authors to a certain impartial recording of everything, good or evil, which seems of moment.
The Third Crusade was narrated in the West from very different points of view by Anglo-Norman, French and German authorities. The primary Anglo-Norman authority is the Carmen Ambrosii, or, as it is called by M. Gaston Paris, L’Estoire de la guerre sainte. This is an octosyllabic poem in French verse, written by Ambroise, a Norman trouvère who followed Richard I. to the Holy Land. The poem first came to be known by scholars about 1873, and has been edited by M. Gaston Paris (Paris, 1897). The Itinerarium Peregrinorum, a work in ornate Latin prose, is (except for the first book) a translation of the Carmen masquerading under the guise of an independent work. There seems no doubt that it is a piece of plagiary, and that its writer, Richard, “canon of the Holy Trinity” in London, stands to the Carmen as Tudebod to the Gesta, or Albert of Aix to his supposed original. The Third Crusade is also described from the English point of view by all contemporary writers of history in England, e.g. Ralph of Coggeshall, who used information gained from crusaders, and William of Newburgh, who had access to a work by Richard I.’s chaplain Anselm, which is now lost.[4] The French side is presented in Rigord’s Gesta Philippi Augusti and in the Gesta (an abridgment and continuation of Rigord) and the Philippeis of William the Breton. The two French writers represent Richard as a faithless vassal: in the German writers—Tagino, dean of Passau, who wrote a Descriptio of Barbarossa’s Crusade (1189–1190); and Ansbert, an Austrian clerk, who wrote De expeditione Friderici Imperatoris (1187–1196)—Richard appears rather as a monster of pride and arrogance. From the Arabic point of view the life of Richard’s rival, Saladin, is described by Beha-ud-din, a high official under Saladin, who writes a panegyric on his master, somewhat confused in chronology and partial in its sympathies, but nevertheless of great value. The various continuations of William of Tyre above mentioned represent the opinion of the native Franks (which is hostile to Richard I.); while in Nicetas, who wrote a history of the Eastern empire from 1118 to 1206, we have a Byzantine authority who, as Professor Bury remarks, “differs from Anna and Cinnamus in his tone towards the crusaders, to whom he is surprisingly fair.”
For the Fourth Crusade the primary authority is Villehardouin’s La Conquête de Constantinople, an official apology for the diversion of the Crusade written by one of its leaders, and concealing the arcana under an appearance of frank naïveté. His work is usefully supplemented by the narrative (La Prise de Constantinople) of
- ↑ Von Sybel’s view must be modified by that of Kugler, to which a scholar like Hagenmeyer has to some extent given his adhesion (cf. his edition of the Gesta, pp. 62-68). Hagenmeyer inclines to believe in an original author, distinct from Albert the copyist; and he thinks that this original author (whether or no he was present during the Crusade) used the Gesta and also Fulcher, though he had probably also “eigene Notizen und Aufzeichnungen.”
- ↑ See Pigonneau, Le Cycle de la croisade, &c. (Paris, 1877); and Hagenmeyer, Peter der Eremite (Leipzig, 1879).
- ↑ On the bibliography of the Second Crusade see Kugler, Studien zur Geschichte des zweiten Kreuzzüges (Stuttgart, 1866).
- ↑ Of these writers see Archer’s Crusade of Richard I., Appendix (in Nutt’s series of Histories from Contemporary Writers).
