William of Tyre
Encyclopedia
William of Tyre was a medieval
prelate
and chronicle
r. As archbishop of Tyre
, he is sometimes known as William II to distinguish him from a predecessor, William of Malines
. He grew up in Jerusalem at the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
, which had been established in 1099 after the First Crusade
, and he spent twenty years studying the liberal arts
and canon law
in the universities of Europe
.
Following William's return to Jerusalem in 1165, King Amalric I
made him an ambassador to the Byzantine Empire
. William became tutor to the king's son, the future King Baldwin IV
, whom William discovered to be a leper
. After Amalric's death, William became chancellor
and archbishop of Tyre, two of the highest offices in the kingdom, and in 1179 William led the eastern delegation to the Third Council of the Lateran
. As he was involved in the dynastic struggle that developed during Baldwin IV's reign, his importance waned when a rival faction gained control of royal affairs. He was passed over for the prestigious Patriarchate of Jerusalem
, and died in obscurity, probably in 1186.
William wrote an account of the Lateran Council and a history of the Islamic states from the time of Muhammad
. Neither work survives. He is famous today as the author of a history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. William composed his chronicle
in excellent Latin for his time, with numerous quotations from classical literature. The chronicle is sometimes given the title Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum ("History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea") or Historia Ierosolimitana ("History of Jerusalem"), or the Historia for short. It was translated into French soon after his death, and thereafter into numerous other languages. Because it is the only source for the history of twelfth-century Jerusalem written by a native, historians have often assumed that William's statements could be taken at face value. However, more recent historians have shown that William's involvement in the kingdom's political disputes resulted in detectable biases in his account. Despite this, he is considered the greatest chronicler of the crusades, and one of the best authors of the Middle Ages
.
to be established by the crusaders, following the County of Edessa
and the Principality of Antioch
, and followed by the County of Tripoli
. Jerusalem's first three rulers, Godfrey of Bouillon
(1099–1100), his brother Baldwin I
(1100–1118), and their cousin Baldwin II
(1118–1131), expanded and secured the kingdom's borders, which encompassed roughly the same territory as modern-day Israel
, Palestine
, and Lebanon
. During the kingdom's early decades, the population was swelled by pilgrims visiting the holiest sites of Christendom. Merchants from the Mediterranean city-states of Italy
and France
were eager to exploit the rich trade markets of the east.
William's family probably originated in either France or Italy, since he was very familiar with both countries. His parents were likely merchants who had settled in the kingdom and were "apparently well-to-do", although it is unknown whether they participated in the First Crusade or arrived later. William was born in Jerusalem around 1130. He had at least one brother, Ralph, who was one of the city's burgesses, a non-noble leader of the merchant community. Nothing more is known about his family, except that his mother died before 1165.
As a child William was educated in Jerusalem, at the cathedral school
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
. The scholaster, or school-master, John the Pisan, taught William to read and write, and first introduced him to Latin
. From the Historia it is clear that he also knew French
and possibly Italian
, but there is not enough evidence to determine whether he learned Greek
, Persian
, and Arabic
, as is sometimes claimed.
Around 1145 William went to Europe to continue his education in the schools of France and Italy, especially in those of Paris
and Bologna
, "the two most important intellectual centers of twelfth-century Christendom." These schools were not yet the official universities
that they would become in the 13th century, but by the end of the 11th century both had numerous schools for the arts and sciences. They were separate from the cathedral schools, and were established by independent professors who were masters of their field of study. Students from all over Europe gathered there to hear lectures from these masters. William studied liberal arts
and theology
in Paris
and Orléans
for about ten years, with professors who had been students of Thierry of Chartres
and Gilbert de la Porrée
. He also spent time studying under Robert of Melun
and Adam de Parvo Ponte, among others. In Orléans, one of the pre-eminent centres of classical studies, he read ancient Roman literature (known simply as "the Authors") with Hilary of Orléans, and learned mathematics
("especially Euclid
") with William of Soissons. For six years, he studied theology with Peter Lombard
and Maurice de Sully
. Afterwards, he studied civil law
and canon law
in Bologna
, with the "Four Doctors
", Hugo de Porta Ravennate
, Bulgarus
, Martinus Gosia
, and Jacob de Boraigne
. William's list of professors "gives us almost a who's who of the grammarians, philosophers, theologians, and law teachers of the so-called Twelfth-Century Renaissance", and shows that he was as well-educated as any European cleric. His contemporary John of Salisbury
had many of the same teachers.
of the cathedral at Acre. In 1167 he was appointed archdeacon
of the cathedral of Tyre by Frederick de la Roche, archbishop of Tyre, with the support of King Amalric I
.
Amalric had come to power in 1164 and had made it his goal to conquer Egypt
. Egypt
had been invaded by King Baldwin I fifty years earlier, and the weak Fatimid Caliphate was forced to pay yearly tribute to Jerusalem. Amalric turned towards Egypt because Muslim territory to the east of Jerusalem had fallen under the control of the powerful Zengid
sultan Nur ad-Din. Nur ad-Din had taken control of Damascus
in 1154, six years after the disastrous siege of Damascus
by the Second Crusade
in 1148. Jerusalem could now expand only to the southwest, towards Egypt, and in 1153 Ascalon
, the last Fatimid outpost in Palestine, fell to the crusaders
. Nur ad-Din, however, also wished to acquire Egypt, and sent his army to hinder Amalric's plans. This was the situation in the east when William returned from Europe. In 1167 Amalric married Maria Comnena, grand-niece of Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus, and in 1168 the king sent William to finalize a treaty for a joint Byzantine-crusader campaign against Egypt. The expedition, Amalric's fourth, was the first with support from the Byzantine navy
. Amalric, however, did not wait for the fleet to arrive. He managed to capture Damietta
, but within a few years he was expelled from Egypt by one of Nur ad-Din's generals, Saladin
, who would later become Jerusalem's greatest threat.
Meanwhile, William continued his advancement in the kingdom. In 1169 he visited Rome
, possibly to answer accusations made against him by Archbishop Frederick, although if so, the charge is unknown. It is also possible that while Frederick was away on a diplomatic mission in Europe, a problem within the diocese forced William to seek the archbishop's assistance.
On his return from Rome in 1170 he may have been commissioned by Amalric to write a history of the kingdom. He also became the tutor of Amalric's son and heir, Baldwin IV
. When Baldwin was thirteen years old, he was playing with some children, who were trying to cause each other pain by scratching each others' arms. "The other boys gave evidence of pain by their outcries," wrote William, "but Baldwin, although his comrades did not spare him, endured it altogether too patiently, as if he felt nothing ... It is impossible to refrain from tears while speaking of this great misfortune." William inspected Baldwin's arms and recognized the possible symptoms of leprosy
, which was confirmed as Baldwin grew older.
Amalric died in 1174, and Baldwin IV succeeded him as king. Nur ad-Din also died in 1174, and his general Saladin spent the rest of the decade consolidating his hold on both Egypt and Nur ad-Din's possessions in Syria, which allowed him to completely encircle Jerusalem. The subsequent events have often been interpreted as a struggle between two opposing factions, a "court party" and a "noble party." The "court party" was led by Baldwin's mother, Amalric's first wife Agnes of Courtenay
, and her immediate family
, as well as recent arrivals from Europe who were inexperienced in the affairs of the kingdom and were in favour of war with Saladin. The "noble party" was led by Raymond III of Tripoli
and the native nobility of the kingdom, who favoured peaceful co-existence with the Muslims. This is the interpretation offered by William himself in the Historia, and it was taken as fact by later historians. Peter W. Edbury, however, has more recently argued that William must be considered extremely partisan as he was naturally allied with Raymond, who was responsible for his later advancement in political and religious offices. The accounts of the 13th-century authors who continued the Historia in French must also be considered suspect, as they were allied to Raymond's supporters in the Ibelin
family. The general consensus among recent historians is that although there was a dynastic struggle, "the division was not between native barons and newcomers from the West, but between the king's maternal and paternal kin."
Miles of Plancy
briefly held the regency for the underaged Baldwin IV. Miles was assassinated in October 1174, and Raymond III was soon appointed to replace him. Raymond named William chancellor of Jerusalem
, as well as archdeacon of Nazareth
, and on 6 June 1175, William was elected archbishop of Tyre to replace Frederick de la Roche, who had died in October 1174. William's duties as chancellor probably did not take up too much of his time; the scribes and officials in the chancery
drafted documents and it may not have even been necessary for him to be present to sign them. Instead he focused on his duties as archbishop. In 1177 he performed the funeral services for William of Montferrat
, husband of Baldwin IV's sister Sibylla
, when the patriarch of Jerusalem
, Amalric of Nesle, was too sick to attend.
In 1179, William was one of the delegates from Jerusalem and the other crusader states at the Third Lateran Council
; among the others were Heraclius
, archbishop of Caesarea
, Joscius
, bishop of Acre
and William's future successor in Tyre, the bishops of Sebastea
, Bethlehem
, Tripoli
, and Jabala
, and the abbot of Mount Sion
. Patriarch Amalric and Patriarch of Antioch
Aimery of Limoges
were unable to attend, and William and the other bishops did not have sufficient weight to persuade Pope Alexander III
of the need for a new crusade. William was, however, sent by Alexander as an ambassador to Emperor Manuel, and Manuel then sent him on a mission to the Principality of Antioch
. William does not mention exactly what happened during these embassies, but he probably discussed the Byzantine alliance with Jerusalem, and Manuel's protectorate over Antioch, where, due to pressure from Rome and Jerusalem, the emperor was forced to give up his attempts to restore a Greek patriarch. William was absent from Jerusalem for two years, returning home in 1180.
in 1176 and Raymond III had been removed from the regency, but as a leper Baldwin could have no children and could not be expected to rule much longer. After the death of William of Montferrat in 1177, King Baldwin's widowed sister Sibylla required a new husband. At Easter in 1180, the two factions were divided even further when Raymond and his cousin Bohemond III of Antioch attempted to force Sibylla to marry Baldwin of Ibelin
. Raymond and Bohemond were King Baldwin's nearest male relatives in the paternal line, and could have claimed the throne if the king died without an heir or a suitable replacement. Before Raymond and Bohemond arrived, however, Agnes and King Baldwin arranged for Sibylla to be married to a Poitevin
newcomer, Guy of Lusignan
, whose older brother Amalric of Lusignan
was already an established figure at court.
The dispute affected William, since he had been appointed chancellor by Raymond and may have fallen out of favour after Raymond was removed from the regency. When Patriarch Amalric died on 6 October 1180, the two most obvious choices for his successor were William and Heraclius of Caesarea. They were fairly evenly matched in background and education, but politically they were allied with opposite parties, as Heraclius was one of Agnes of Courtenay's supporters. It seems that the canons of the Holy Sepulchre were unable to decide, and asked the king for advice; due to Agnes' influence, Heraclius was elected. There were rumours that Agnes and Heraclius were lovers, but this information comes from the partisan 13th-century continuations of the Historia, and there is no other evidence to substantiate such a claim. William himself says almost nothing about the election and Heraclius' character or his subsequent patriarchate, probably reflecting his disappointment at the outcome.
s claim that Heraclius excommunicated William in 1183, but it is unknown why Heraclius would have done this. They also claim that William went to Rome to appeal to the Pope, where Heraclius had him poisoned. According to Peter Edbury and John Rowe, the obscurity of William's life during these years shows that he did not play a large political role, but concentrated on ecclesiastical affairs and the writing of his history. The story of his excommunication, and the unlikely detail that he was poisoned, were probably an invention of the Old French continuators. William remained in the kingdom and continued to write up until 1184, but by then Jerusalem was internally divided by political factions and externally surrounded by the forces of Saladin, and "the only subjects that present themselves are the disasters of a sorrowing country and its manifold misfortunes, themes which can serve only to draw forth lamentations and tears."
His importance had dwindled with the victory of Agnes and her supporters, and with the accession of Baldwin V
, infant son of Sibylla and William of Montferrat. Baldwin was a sickly child and he died the next year. In 1186 he was succeeded by his mother Sibylla and her second husband Guy of Lusignan, ruling jointly. William was probably in failing health by this point. Rudolf Hiestand discovered that the date of William's death was 29 September, but the year was not recorded; whatever the year, there was a new chancellor in May 1185 and a new archbishop of Tyre by 21 October 1186. Hans Mayer concluded that William died in 1186, and this is the year generally accepted by scholars.
William's foresight about the misfortunes of his country was proven correct less than a year later. Saladin defeated King Guy at the Battle of Hattin
in 1187, and went on to capture Jerusalem
and almost every other city of the kingdom, except the seat of William's archdiocese, Tyre. News of the fall of Jerusalem shocked Europe and plans were made to send assistance. According to Roger of Wendover
, William was present at Gisors
in France in 1188 when Henry II of England
and Philip II of France
agreed to go on crusade
: "Thereupon the king of the English first took the sign of the cross at the hands of the Archbishop of Rheims and William of Tyre, the latter of whom had been entrusted by our lord the pope with the office of legate in the affairs of the crusade in the western part of Europe." Roger was however mistaken; he knew that an unnamed archbishop of Tyre was present and assumed it must have been the William whose chronicle he possessed, although the archbishop in question was actually William's successor Joscius
.
up to 1184, for which he used Eutychius of Alexandria as his main source. This work seems to have been known in Europe in the 13th century but it also does not survive. August C. Krey thought William's Arabic sources may have come from the library of the Damascene diplomat Usama ibn Munqidh, whose library was looted by Baldwin III from a shipwreck in 1154. Alan V. Murray, however, has argued that, at least for the accounts of Persia and the Turks in his chronicle, William relied on Biblical and earlier medieval legends rather than actual history, and his knowledge "may be less indicative of eastern ethnography than of western mythography."
by Umar
in the seventh century, but otherwise the work deals with the advent of the First Crusade
and the subsequent political history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It is arranged, but was not written, chronologically; the first sections to be written were probably the chapters about the invasion of Egypt in 1167, which are extremely detailed and were likely composed before the Fatimid dynasty was overthrown in 1171. Much of the Historia was finished before William left to attend the Lateran Council, but new additions and corrections were made after his return in 1180, perhaps because he now realized that European readers would also be interested in the history of the kingdom. In 1184 he wrote the Prologue and the beginning of the twenty-third book.
William had access to the chronicles of the First Crusade, including Fulcher of Chartres
, Albert of Aix
, Raymond of Aguilers
, Baldric of Dol
, and the Gesta Francorum
, as well as other documents located in the kingdom's archives. He used Walter the Chancellor
and other now-lost works for the history of the Principality of Antioch
. From the end of Fulcher's chronicle in 1127, William is the only source of information from an author living in Jerusalem. For events that happened in William's own lifetime, he interviewed older people who had witnessed the events about which he was writing, and drew on his own memory.
William's classical education allowed him to compose Latin superior to that of many medieval writers. He used numerous ancient Roman and early Christian authors, either for quotations or as inspiration for the framework and organization of the Historia. His vocabulary is almost entirely classical, with only a few medieval constructions such as "loricator" (someone who makes armour, a calque
of the Arabic "zarra") and "assellare" (to empty one's bowels). He was capable of clever word-play and advanced rhetoric
al devices, but he was prone to repetition of a number of words and phrases. His writing also shows phrasing and spelling which is unusual or unknown in purely classical Latin but not uncommon in medieval Latin
, such as:
, William did not place much emphasis on the intervention of God in human affairs, resulting in a somewhat "secular" history. Nevertheless, he included much information that is clearly legendary, especially when referring to the First Crusade, which even in his own day was already considered an age of great Christian heroes. Expanding on the accounts of Albert of Aix, Peter the Hermit
is given prominence in the preaching of the First Crusade, to the point that it was he, not Pope Urban II
, who originally conceived the crusade. Godfrey of Bouillon, the first ruler of crusader Jerusalem, was also depicted as the leader of the crusade from the beginning, and William attributed to him legendary strength and virtue. This reflected the almost mythological status that Godfrey and the other first crusaders held for the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the late twelfth century.
William gave a more nuanced picture of the kings of his own day. He claimed to have been commissioned to write by King Amalric himself, but William did not allow himself to praise the king excessively; for example, Amalric did not respect the rights of the church, and although he was a good military commander, he could not stop the increasing threat from the neighbouring Muslim states. On a personal level, William admired the king's education and his interest in history and law, but also noted that Amalric had "breasts like those of a woman hanging down to his waist" and was shocked when the king questioned the resurrection of the dead
.
About Amalric's son Baldwin IV, however, "there was no ambiguity". Baldwin was nothing but heroic in the face of his debilitating leprosy, and he led military campaigns against Saladin even while still underaged; William tends to gloss over campaigns where Baldwin was not actually in charge, preferring to direct his praise towards the afflicted king rather than subordinate commanders. William's history can be seen as an apologia, a literary defense, for the kingdom, and more specifically for Baldwin's rule. By the 1170s and 1180s, western Europeans were reluctant to support the kingdom, partly because it was far away and there were more pressing concerns in Europe, but also because leprosy was usually considered divine punishment.
William was famously biased against the Knights Templar
, whom he believed to be arrogant and disrespectful of both secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies, as they were not required to pay tithes and were legally accountable only to the Pope. Although he was writing decades later, he is the earliest author to describe the actual foundation of the Templar order. He was generally favourable towards them when discussing their early days, but resented the power and influence they held in his own time. William accused them of hindering the Siege of Ascalon
in 1153; of poorly defending a cave-fortress in 1165, for which twelve Templars were hanged by King Amalric; of sabotaging the invasion of Egypt
in 1168; and of murdering Assassin ambassadors in 1173.
Compared to other Latin authors of the twelfth century, William is surprisingly favourable to the Byzantine Empire. He had visited the Byzantine court as an official ambassador and probably knew more about Byzantine affairs than any other Latin chronicler. He shared the poor opinion of Alexius I Comnenus that had developed during the First Crusade, although he was also critical of some of the crusaders' dealings with Alexius. He was more impressed by Alexius' son John II Comnenus; he did not approve of John's attempts to bring the crusader Principality of Antioch under Byzantine control, but John's military expeditions against the Muslim states, the common enemy of both Greeks and Latins, were considered admirable. Emperor Manuel, whom William met during his visits to Constantinople, was portrayed more ambivalently, much like King Amalric. William admired him personally, but recognized that the Empire was powerless to help Jerusalem against the Muslim forces of Nur ad-Din and Saladin. William was especially disappointed in the failure of the joint campaign against Egypt in 1169. The end of the Historia coincides with the massacre of the Latins
in Constantinople and the chaos that followed the coup of Andronicus I Comnenus, and in his description of those events, William was certainly not immune to the extreme anti-Greek rhetoric that was often found in Western European sources.
As a medieval Christian author William could hardly avoid hostility towards the kingdom's Muslim neighbours, but as an educated man who lived among Muslims in the east, he was rarely polemical or completely dismissive of Islam. He did not think Muslims were pagans, but rather that they belonged to a heretical sect of Christianity and followed the teachings of a false prophet. He often praised the Muslim leaders of his own day, even if he lamented their power over the Christian kingdom; thus Muslim rulers such as Mu'in ad-Din Unur
, Nur ad-Din, Shirkuh
, and even Jerusalem's ultimate conqueror Saladin are presented as honourable and pious men, characteristics that William did not bestow on many of his own Christian contemporaries.
, Matthew Paris
, and Roger of Wendover
in their own chronicles. However, there are only ten known manuscripts that contain the Latin chronicle, all of which come from France and England, so William's work may not have been very widely read in its original form. In England, however, the Historia was expanded in Latin, with additional information from the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi
, and the chronicle of Roger Hoveden; this version was written around 1220.
It is unknown what title William himself gave his chronicle, although one group of manuscripts uses Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum and another uses Historia Ierosolimitana. The Latin text was printed for the first time in Basel in 1549 by Nicholas Brylinger; it was also published in the Gesta Dei per Francos by Jacques Bongars
in 1611 and the Recueil des historiens des croisades
(RHC) by Auguste-Arthur Beugnot and Auguste Le Prévost
in 1844, and Bongars' text was reprinted in the Patrologia Latina
by Jacques Paul Migne
in 1855. The now-standard Latin critical edition, based on six of the surviving manuscripts, was published as Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon in the Corpus Christianorum
in 1986, by R. B. C. Huygens, with notes by Hans E. Mayer and Gerhard Rösch. The RHC edition was translated into English by Emily A. Babcock and August C. Krey in 1943 as "A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea," although the translation is sometimes incomplete or inexact.
and Bernard le Trésorier. The translation was sometimes called the Livre dou conqueste; it was known by this name throughout Europe as well as in the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus
and in Cilician Armenia, and 14th-century Venetian geographer Marino Sanuto the Elder
had a copy of it. The French was further translated into Spanish, as the Gran Conquista de Ultramar, during the reign of Alfonso the Wise of Castile
in the late 13th century. The French version was so widespread that the Renaissance
author Francesco Pipino translated it back into Latin, unaware that a Latin original already existed. A Middle English
translation of the French was made by William Caxton
in the 15th century.
, or literary theme, in which a wise ruler, a lover of history and literature, wishes to preserve for posterity the grand deeds of his reign. William's claims of impartiality are also a typical topos in ancient and medieval historical writing.
His depiction of Baldwin IV as a hero is an attempt "to vindicate the politics of his own party and to blacken those of its opponents." As mentioned above, William was opposed to Baldwin's mother Agnes of Courtenay, Patriarch Heraclius, and their supporters; his interpretation of events during Baldwin's reign was previously taken as fact almost without question. In the mid twentieth century, Marshall W. Baldwin, Steven Runciman
, and Hans E. Mayer were influential in perpetuating this point of view, although the more recent re-evaluations of this period by Vessey, Peter Edbury and Bernard Hamilton have undone much of William's influence.
An often-noted flaw in the Historia is William's poor memory for dates. "Chronology is sometimes confused, and dates are given wrongly", even for basic information such as the regnal dates of the kings of Jerusalem. For example, William gives the date of Amalric's death as 11 July 1173, when it actually occurred in 1174.
Despite his biases and errors, William "has always been considered one of the greatest medieval writers." Steven Runciman
wrote that "he had a broad vision; he understood the significance of the great events of his time and the sequence of cause and effect in history." Christopher Tyerman calls him "the historian's historian", and "the greatest crusade historian of all," and Bernard Hamilton says he "is justly considered one of the finest historians of the Middle Ages". As the Dictionary of the Middle Ages
says, "William's achievements in assembling and evaluating sources, and in writing in excellent and original Latin a critical and judicious (if chronologically faulty) narrative, make him an outstanding historian, superior by medieval, and not inferior by modern, standards of scholarship."
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
prelate
Prelate
A prelate is a high-ranking member of the clergy who is an ordinary or who ranks in precedence with ordinaries. The word derives from the Latin prælatus, the past participle of præferre, which means "carry before", "be set above or over" or "prefer"; hence, a prelate is one set over others.-Related...
and chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
r. As archbishop of Tyre
Archbishop of Tyre
The Archbishop of Tyre was one of the major suffragans of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem during the Crusades and was established to serve the Roman Catholic members of the diocese....
, he is sometimes known as William II to distinguish him from a predecessor, William of Malines
William of Malines
William of Malines or Messines was the first medieval Archbishop of Tyre from 1128 to 1130 and thereafter Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem until his death...
. He grew up in Jerusalem at the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Kingdom of Jerusalem
The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Catholic kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods....
, which had been established in 1099 after the First Crusade
First Crusade
The First Crusade was a military expedition by Western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquest of the Levant, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem...
, and he spent twenty years studying the liberal arts
Liberal arts
The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...
and canon law
Canon law
Canon law is the body of laws & regulations made or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church , the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...
in the universities of Europe
Medieval university
Medieval university is an institution of higher learning which was established during High Middle Ages period and is a corporation.The first institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and the 12th centuries for the study of...
.
Following William's return to Jerusalem in 1165, King Amalric I
Amalric I of Jerusalem
Amalric I of Jerusalem was King of Jerusalem 1163–1174, and Count of Jaffa and Ascalon before his accession. Amalric was the second son of Melisende of Jerusalem and Fulk of Jerusalem...
made him an ambassador to the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
. William became tutor to the king's son, the future King Baldwin IV
Baldwin IV of Jerusalem
Baldwin IV of Jerusalem , called the Leper or the Leprous, the son of Amalric I of Jerusalem and his first wife, Agnes of Courtenay, was king of Jerusalem from 1174 to 1185. His full sister was Queen Sibylla of Jerusalem and his nephew through this sister was the child-king Baldwin V...
, whom William discovered to be a leper
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...
. After Amalric's death, William became chancellor
Officers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
There were six major officers of the kingdom of Jerusalem: the constable, the marshal, the seneschal, the chamberlain , the butler and the chancellor...
and archbishop of Tyre, two of the highest offices in the kingdom, and in 1179 William led the eastern delegation to the Third Council of the Lateran
Third Council of the Lateran
The Third Council of the Lateran met in March 1179 as the eleventh ecumenical council. Pope Alexander III presided and 302 bishops attended.By agreement reached at the Peace of Venice in 1177 the bitter conflict between Alexander III and Emperor Frederick I was brought to an end...
. As he was involved in the dynastic struggle that developed during Baldwin IV's reign, his importance waned when a rival faction gained control of royal affairs. He was passed over for the prestigious Patriarchate of Jerusalem
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is the title possessed by the Latin Rite Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem. The Archdiocese of Jerusalem has jurisdiction for all Latin Rite Catholics in Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Cyprus...
, and died in obscurity, probably in 1186.
William wrote an account of the Lateran Council and a history of the Islamic states from the time of Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
. Neither work survives. He is famous today as the author of a history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. William composed his chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
in excellent Latin for his time, with numerous quotations from classical literature. The chronicle is sometimes given the title Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum ("History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea") or Historia Ierosolimitana ("History of Jerusalem"), or the Historia for short. It was translated into French soon after his death, and thereafter into numerous other languages. Because it is the only source for the history of twelfth-century Jerusalem written by a native, historians have often assumed that William's statements could be taken at face value. However, more recent historians have shown that William's involvement in the kingdom's political disputes resulted in detectable biases in his account. Despite this, he is considered the greatest chronicler of the crusades, and one of the best authors of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
.
Early life
The Kingdom of Jerusalem was founded in 1099 at the end of the First Crusade. It was the third of four Christian territoriesCrusader states
The Crusader states were a number of mostly 12th- and 13th-century feudal states created by Western European crusaders in Asia Minor, Greece and the Holy Land , and during the Northern Crusades in the eastern Baltic area...
to be established by the crusaders, following the County of Edessa
County of Edessa
The County of Edessa was one of the Crusader states in the 12th century, based around Edessa, a city with an ancient history and an early tradition of Christianity....
and the Principality of Antioch
Principality of Antioch
The Principality of Antioch, including parts of modern-day Turkey and Syria, was one of the crusader states created during the First Crusade.-Foundation:...
, and followed by the County of Tripoli
County of Tripoli
The County of Tripoli was the last Crusader state founded in the Levant, located in what today are parts of western Syria and northern Lebanon, where exists the modern city of Tripoli. The Crusader state was captured and created by Christian forces in 1109, originally held by Bertrand of Toulouse...
. Jerusalem's first three rulers, Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon
Godfrey of Bouillon was a medieval Frankish knight who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 until his death. He was the Lord of Bouillon, from which he took his byname, from 1076 and the Duke of Lower Lorraine from 1087...
(1099–1100), his brother Baldwin I
Baldwin I of Jerusalem
Baldwin I of Jerusalem, formerly Baldwin I of Edessa, born Baldwin of Boulogne , 1058? – 2 April 1118, was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, who became the first Count of Edessa and then the second ruler and first titled King of Jerusalem...
(1100–1118), and their cousin Baldwin II
Baldwin II of Jerusalem
Baldwin II of Jerusalem , formerly Baldwin II of Edessa, also called Baldwin of Bourcq, born Baldwin of Rethel was the second count of Edessa from 1100 to 1118, and the third king of Jerusalem from 1118 until his death.-Ancestry:Baldwin was the son of Hugh, count of Rethel, and his wife Melisende,...
(1118–1131), expanded and secured the kingdom's borders, which encompassed roughly the same territory as modern-day Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, Palestine
Palestinian territories
The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...
, and Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
. During the kingdom's early decades, the population was swelled by pilgrims visiting the holiest sites of Christendom. Merchants from the Mediterranean city-states of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
were eager to exploit the rich trade markets of the east.
William's family probably originated in either France or Italy, since he was very familiar with both countries. His parents were likely merchants who had settled in the kingdom and were "apparently well-to-do", although it is unknown whether they participated in the First Crusade or arrived later. William was born in Jerusalem around 1130. He had at least one brother, Ralph, who was one of the city's burgesses, a non-noble leader of the merchant community. Nothing more is known about his family, except that his mother died before 1165.
As a child William was educated in Jerusalem, at the cathedral school
Cathedral school
Cathedral schools began in the Early Middle Ages as centers of advanced education, some of them ultimately evolving into medieval universities. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, they were complemented by the monastic schools...
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Church of the Resurrection by Eastern Christians, is a church within the walled Old City of Jerusalem. It is a few steps away from the Muristan....
. The scholaster, or school-master, John the Pisan, taught William to read and write, and first introduced him to Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. From the Historia it is clear that he also knew French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and possibly Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, but there is not enough evidence to determine whether he learned Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, and Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, as is sometimes claimed.
Around 1145 William went to Europe to continue his education in the schools of France and Italy, especially in those of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, "the two most important intellectual centers of twelfth-century Christendom." These schools were not yet the official universities
Medieval university
Medieval university is an institution of higher learning which was established during High Middle Ages period and is a corporation.The first institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and the 12th centuries for the study of...
that they would become in the 13th century, but by the end of the 11th century both had numerous schools for the arts and sciences. They were separate from the cathedral schools, and were established by independent professors who were masters of their field of study. Students from all over Europe gathered there to hear lectures from these masters. William studied liberal arts
Liberal arts
The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...
and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
in Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
and Orléans
Orléans
-Prehistory and Roman:Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the Carnutes tribe where the Druids held their annual assembly. It was conquered and destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then rebuilt under the Roman Empire...
for about ten years, with professors who had been students of Thierry of Chartres
Thierry of Chartres
Thierry of Chartres or Theodoric the Breton was a twelfth-century philosopher working at Chartres and Paris, France....
and Gilbert de la Porrée
Gilbert de la Porrée
Gilbert de la Porrée , also known as Gilbert of Poitiers, Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis, was a scholastic logician and theologian.-Life:...
. He also spent time studying under Robert of Melun
Robert of Melun
Robert of Melun was an English scholastic Christian theologian who taught in France, and later became Bishop of Hereford in England. He studied under Peter Abelard in Paris before teaching there and at Melun, which gave him his surname. His students included John of Salisbury, Roger of Worcester,...
and Adam de Parvo Ponte, among others. In Orléans, one of the pre-eminent centres of classical studies, he read ancient Roman literature (known simply as "the Authors") with Hilary of Orléans, and learned mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
("especially Euclid
Euclid
Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...
") with William of Soissons. For six years, he studied theology with Peter Lombard
Peter Lombard
Peter Lombard was a scholastic theologian and bishop and author of Four Books of Sentences, which became the standard textbook of theology, for which he is also known as Magister Sententiarum-Biography:Peter Lombard was born in Lumellogno , in...
and Maurice de Sully
Maurice de Sully
Maurice de Sully was Bishop of Paris from 1160 until his death.-Biography:He was born of humble parents at Sully-sur-Loire , near Orléans, at the beginning of the twelfth century. He came to Paris towards 1140 and studied for the ecclesiastical state. He soon became known as an able professor of...
. Afterwards, he studied civil law
Civil law (common law)
Civil law, as opposed to criminal law, is the branch of law dealing with disputes between individuals or organizations, in which compensation may be awarded to the victim...
and canon law
Canon law
Canon law is the body of laws & regulations made or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church , the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...
in Bologna
University of Bologna
The Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...
, with the "Four Doctors
Four Doctors of Bologna
The Four Doctors of Bologna were Italian jurists and glossators of the 12th century, based in the University of Bologna: Bulgarus, Martinus Gosia, Jacobus de Boragine and Hugo de Porta Ravennate....
", Hugo de Porta Ravennate
Four Doctors of Bologna
The Four Doctors of Bologna were Italian jurists and glossators of the 12th century, based in the University of Bologna: Bulgarus, Martinus Gosia, Jacobus de Boragine and Hugo de Porta Ravennate....
, Bulgarus
Bulgarus
Bulgarus was a twelfth century Italian jurist, born at Bologna. He is sometimes erroneously called Bulgarinus, which was properly the name of a jurist of the 15th century....
, Martinus Gosia
Martinus Gosia
Martinus Gosia was one of the glossators and a 12th century Italian jurist, counted among the Four Doctors of Bologna, the others being Bulgarus, Hugo de Porta Ravennate and Jacobus de Boragine....
, and Jacob de Boraigne
Four Doctors of Bologna
The Four Doctors of Bologna were Italian jurists and glossators of the 12th century, based in the University of Bologna: Bulgarus, Martinus Gosia, Jacobus de Boragine and Hugo de Porta Ravennate....
. William's list of professors "gives us almost a who's who of the grammarians, philosophers, theologians, and law teachers of the so-called Twelfth-Century Renaissance", and shows that he was as well-educated as any European cleric. His contemporary John of Salisbury
John of Salisbury
John of Salisbury , who described himself as Johannes Parvus , was an English author, educationalist, diplomat and bishop of Chartres, and was born at Salisbury.-Early life and education:...
had many of the same teachers.
Religious and political life in Jerusalem
The highest religious and political offices in Jerusalem were usually held by Europeans who had arrived on pilgrimage or crusade. William was one of the few natives with a European education, and he quickly rose through the ranks. After his return to the Holy Land in 1165, he became canonCanon (priest)
A canon is a priest or minister who is a member of certain bodies of the Christian clergy subject to an ecclesiastical rule ....
of the cathedral at Acre. In 1167 he was appointed archdeacon
Archdeacon
An archdeacon is a senior clergy position in Anglicanism, Syrian Malabar Nasrani, Chaldean Catholic, and some other Christian denominations, above that of most clergy and below a bishop. In the High Middle Ages it was the most senior diocesan position below a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church...
of the cathedral of Tyre by Frederick de la Roche, archbishop of Tyre, with the support of King Amalric I
Amalric I of Jerusalem
Amalric I of Jerusalem was King of Jerusalem 1163–1174, and Count of Jaffa and Ascalon before his accession. Amalric was the second son of Melisende of Jerusalem and Fulk of Jerusalem...
.
Amalric had come to power in 1164 and had made it his goal to conquer Egypt
Crusader invasions of Egypt
The Crusader invasion of Egypt was a series of campaigns undertaken by the Kingdom of Jerusalem to strengthen its position in the Levant by taking advantage of the weakness of Fatimid Egypt....
. Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
had been invaded by King Baldwin I fifty years earlier, and the weak Fatimid Caliphate was forced to pay yearly tribute to Jerusalem. Amalric turned towards Egypt because Muslim territory to the east of Jerusalem had fallen under the control of the powerful Zengid
Zengid dynasty
The Zengid dynasty was a Muslim dynasty of Turkic origin, which ruled parts of Syria and northern Iraq on behalf of the Seljuk Empire.-History:...
sultan Nur ad-Din. Nur ad-Din had taken control of Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
in 1154, six years after the disastrous siege of Damascus
Siege of Damascus
The Siege of Damascus took place over four days in July 1148, during the Second Crusade. It ended in a decisive crusader defeat and led to the disintegration of the crusade. The two main Christian forces that marched to the Holy Land in response to Pope Eugenius III and Bernard of Clairvaux's call...
by the Second Crusade
Second Crusade
The Second Crusade was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa the previous year to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Crusade by Baldwin of Boulogne in 1098...
in 1148. Jerusalem could now expand only to the southwest, towards Egypt, and in 1153 Ascalon
Ashkelon
Ashkelon is a coastal city in the South District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, south of Tel Aviv, and north of the border with the Gaza Strip. The ancient seaport of Ashkelon dates back to the Neolithic Age...
, the last Fatimid outpost in Palestine, fell to the crusaders
Siege of Ascalon
The Siege of Ascalon took place in 1153, resulting in the capture of that Egyptian fortress by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.-Background:...
. Nur ad-Din, however, also wished to acquire Egypt, and sent his army to hinder Amalric's plans. This was the situation in the east when William returned from Europe. In 1167 Amalric married Maria Comnena, grand-niece of Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus, and in 1168 the king sent William to finalize a treaty for a joint Byzantine-crusader campaign against Egypt. The expedition, Amalric's fourth, was the first with support from the Byzantine navy
Byzantine navy
The Byzantine navy was the naval force of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire. Like the empire it served, it was a direct continuation from its imperial Roman predecessor, but played a far greater role in the defense and survival of the state then its earlier iterations...
. Amalric, however, did not wait for the fleet to arrive. He managed to capture Damietta
Damietta
Damietta , also known as Damiata, or Domyat, is a port and the capital of the Damietta Governorate in Egypt. It is located at the intersection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile, about north of Cairo.-History:...
, but within a few years he was expelled from Egypt by one of Nur ad-Din's generals, Saladin
Saladin
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was an Arabized Kurdish Muslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim and Arab opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
, who would later become Jerusalem's greatest threat.
Meanwhile, William continued his advancement in the kingdom. In 1169 he visited Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, possibly to answer accusations made against him by Archbishop Frederick, although if so, the charge is unknown. It is also possible that while Frederick was away on a diplomatic mission in Europe, a problem within the diocese forced William to seek the archbishop's assistance.
Baldwin IV of Jerusalem
Baldwin IV of Jerusalem , called the Leper or the Leprous, the son of Amalric I of Jerusalem and his first wife, Agnes of Courtenay, was king of Jerusalem from 1174 to 1185. His full sister was Queen Sibylla of Jerusalem and his nephew through this sister was the child-king Baldwin V...
. When Baldwin was thirteen years old, he was playing with some children, who were trying to cause each other pain by scratching each others' arms. "The other boys gave evidence of pain by their outcries," wrote William, "but Baldwin, although his comrades did not spare him, endured it altogether too patiently, as if he felt nothing ... It is impossible to refrain from tears while speaking of this great misfortune." William inspected Baldwin's arms and recognized the possible symptoms of leprosy
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...
, which was confirmed as Baldwin grew older.
Amalric died in 1174, and Baldwin IV succeeded him as king. Nur ad-Din also died in 1174, and his general Saladin spent the rest of the decade consolidating his hold on both Egypt and Nur ad-Din's possessions in Syria, which allowed him to completely encircle Jerusalem. The subsequent events have often been interpreted as a struggle between two opposing factions, a "court party" and a "noble party." The "court party" was led by Baldwin's mother, Amalric's first wife Agnes of Courtenay
Agnes of Courtenay
Agnes of Courtenay was the daughter of Joscelin II of Courtenay by his wife Beatrice , and the mother of king Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and queen Sibylla of Jerusalem.-Dynasty:...
, and her immediate family
House of Courtenay
The House of Courtenay was an important dynasty in medieval France originating from the castle of Courtenay in the Gâtinais , going back to the 10th century. The dynasty descended from Athon, the first lord of Courtenay, apparently himself a descendant of the Counts of Sens and from Pharamond,...
, as well as recent arrivals from Europe who were inexperienced in the affairs of the kingdom and were in favour of war with Saladin. The "noble party" was led by Raymond III of Tripoli
Raymond III of Tripoli
Raymond III of Tripoli was Count of Tripoli from 1152 to 1187 and Prince of Galilee and Tiberias in right of his wife Eschiva.-Early life:...
and the native nobility of the kingdom, who favoured peaceful co-existence with the Muslims. This is the interpretation offered by William himself in the Historia, and it was taken as fact by later historians. Peter W. Edbury, however, has more recently argued that William must be considered extremely partisan as he was naturally allied with Raymond, who was responsible for his later advancement in political and religious offices. The accounts of the 13th-century authors who continued the Historia in French must also be considered suspect, as they were allied to Raymond's supporters in the Ibelin
Ibelin
Ibelin was a castle in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century , which gave its name to an important family of nobles.-The castle:...
family. The general consensus among recent historians is that although there was a dynastic struggle, "the division was not between native barons and newcomers from the West, but between the king's maternal and paternal kin."
Miles of Plancy
Miles of Plancy
Miles of Plancy , also known as Milon or Milo, was a noble in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.He was born in Champagne and came to the east in the 1160s, where he served King Amalric I, to whom he was distantly related. Amalric made him seneschal of Jerusalem, and in 1167 he participated in...
briefly held the regency for the underaged Baldwin IV. Miles was assassinated in October 1174, and Raymond III was soon appointed to replace him. Raymond named William chancellor of Jerusalem
Officers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
There were six major officers of the kingdom of Jerusalem: the constable, the marshal, the seneschal, the chamberlain , the butler and the chancellor...
, as well as archdeacon of Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
, and on 6 June 1175, William was elected archbishop of Tyre to replace Frederick de la Roche, who had died in October 1174. William's duties as chancellor probably did not take up too much of his time; the scribes and officials in the chancery
Chancery (medieval office)
Chancery is a general term for a medieval writing office, responsible for the production of official documents. The title of chancellor, for the head of the office, came to be held by important ministers in a number of states, and remains the title of the heads of government in modern Germany,...
drafted documents and it may not have even been necessary for him to be present to sign them. Instead he focused on his duties as archbishop. In 1177 he performed the funeral services for William of Montferrat
William of Montferrat, Count of Jaffa and Ascalon
William of Montferrat , also called William Longsword , was the Count of Jaffa and Ascalon, the eldest son of William V, Marquess of Montferrat and Judith of Babenberg...
, husband of Baldwin IV's sister Sibylla
Sibylla of Jerusalem
Sibylla of Jerusalem was the Countess of Jaffa and Ascalon from 1176 and Queen of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1190. She was the eldest daughter of Amalric I of Jerusalem and Agnes of Courtenay, sister of Baldwin IV and half-sister of Isabella I of Jerusalem, and mother of Baldwin V of Jerusalem...
, when the patriarch of Jerusalem
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is the title possessed by the Latin Rite Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem. The Archdiocese of Jerusalem has jurisdiction for all Latin Rite Catholics in Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Cyprus...
, Amalric of Nesle, was too sick to attend.
In 1179, William was one of the delegates from Jerusalem and the other crusader states at the Third Lateran Council
Third Council of the Lateran
The Third Council of the Lateran met in March 1179 as the eleventh ecumenical council. Pope Alexander III presided and 302 bishops attended.By agreement reached at the Peace of Venice in 1177 the bitter conflict between Alexander III and Emperor Frederick I was brought to an end...
; among the others were Heraclius
Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem
Heraclius or Eraclius , was archbishop of Caesarea and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.Heraclius was from the Gévaudan in Auvergne, France. Like his later rival William of Tyre he studied law at the University of Bologna: his contemporaries and friends included Stephen of Tournai and Gratian...
, archbishop of Caesarea
Archbishop of Caesarea
The Archbishop of Caesarea was one of the major suffragans of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem during the Crusades. The Bishop of Caesarea became metropolitan of Palestine in the early 3rd century but after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 he was subordinate to the Patriarch of Jerusalem...
, Joscius
Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre
Joscius was Archbishop of Tyre in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the late 12th century.He was a canon and subdeacon of the church of Acre, and became Bishop of Acre on November 23, 1172. He was a member of the delegation from the Latin church of the Crusader states at the Third Lateran...
, bishop of Acre
Bishop of Acre
The Bishop of Acre was a suffragan bishop of the Crusader Archbishop of Tyre. Acre is present-day Akko.-List of bishops of Acre:*Hugh of le Mans?*c.1150 Frederick, Archbishop of Tyre*William*1172 Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre...
and William's future successor in Tyre, the bishops of Sebastea
Sebastia, Nablus
Sebastia is a Palestinian village of over 4,500 inhabitants, located in the Nablus Governorate of the West Bank some 12 kilometers northwest of the city of Nablus. The village's total area is 4,810 dunums, the built up area of which comprises 150 dunums...
, Bethlehem
Titular see of Bethlehem
The See or Diocese of Bethlehem was a diocese in the Roman Catholic Church during the Crusades and is now a titular see. It was associated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nevers.-In Bethlehem:In 1099 Bethlehem was captured in the First Crusade...
, Tripoli
Tripoli, Lebanon
Tripoli is the largest city in northern Lebanon and the second-largest city in Lebanon. Situated 85 km north of the capital Beirut, Tripoli is the capital of the North Governorate and the Tripoli District. Geographically located on the east of the Mediterranean, the city's history dates back...
, and Jabala
Jabala
Jableh , also spelt Jebleh, Jabala, Jablah or Gabala, is a coastal city on the Mediterranean in Syria. with c. 80,000 inhabitants ....
, and the abbot of Mount Sion
Mount Zion
Mount Zion is a place name for a site in Jerusalem, the location of which has shifted several times in history. According to the Hebrew Bible's Book of Samuel, it was the site of the Jebusite fortress called the "stronghold of Zion" that was conquered by King David, becoming his palace in the City...
. Patriarch Amalric and Patriarch of Antioch
Latin Patriarch of Antioch
The Latin Patriarch of Antioch was an office created in 1098 by Bohemund, founder of the Principality of Antioch, one of the crusader states....
Aimery of Limoges
Aimery of Limoges
Aimery or Aymery of Limoges , Aimerikos in Greek and Hemri in Armenian, was a Roman Catholic ecclesiarch in Frankish Outremer and the fourth Latin Patriarch of Antioch from c. 1140 until his death. Throughout his lengthy episcopate he was the most powerful figure in the Principality of Antioch...
were unable to attend, and William and the other bishops did not have sufficient weight to persuade Pope Alexander III
Pope Alexander III
Pope Alexander III , born Rolando of Siena, was Pope from 1159 to 1181. He is noted in history for laying the foundation stone for the Notre Dame de Paris.-Church career:...
of the need for a new crusade. William was, however, sent by Alexander as an ambassador to Emperor Manuel, and Manuel then sent him on a mission to the Principality of Antioch
Principality of Antioch
The Principality of Antioch, including parts of modern-day Turkey and Syria, was one of the crusader states created during the First Crusade.-Foundation:...
. William does not mention exactly what happened during these embassies, but he probably discussed the Byzantine alliance with Jerusalem, and Manuel's protectorate over Antioch, where, due to pressure from Rome and Jerusalem, the emperor was forced to give up his attempts to restore a Greek patriarch. William was absent from Jerusalem for two years, returning home in 1180.
The patriarchal election of 1180
During William's absence a crisis had developed in Jerusalem. King Baldwin had reached the age of majorityAge of majority
The age of majority is the threshold of adulthood as it is conceptualized in law. It is the chronological moment when minors cease to legally be considered children and assume control over their persons, actions, and decisions, thereby terminating the legal control and legal responsibilities of...
in 1176 and Raymond III had been removed from the regency, but as a leper Baldwin could have no children and could not be expected to rule much longer. After the death of William of Montferrat in 1177, King Baldwin's widowed sister Sibylla required a new husband. At Easter in 1180, the two factions were divided even further when Raymond and his cousin Bohemond III of Antioch attempted to force Sibylla to marry Baldwin of Ibelin
Baldwin of Ibelin
Baldwin of Ibelin, also known as Baldwin III of Ramla , was an important noble of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century. He was the second son of Barisan of Ibelin, and was the younger brother of Hugh of Ibelin and older brother of Balian of Ibelin...
. Raymond and Bohemond were King Baldwin's nearest male relatives in the paternal line, and could have claimed the throne if the king died without an heir or a suitable replacement. Before Raymond and Bohemond arrived, however, Agnes and King Baldwin arranged for Sibylla to be married to a Poitevin
Poitou
Poitou was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers.The region of Poitou was called Thifalia in the sixth century....
newcomer, Guy of Lusignan
Guy of Lusignan
Guy of Lusignan was a Poitevin knight, son of Hugh VIII of the prominent Lusignan dynasty. He was king of the crusader state of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1192 by right of marriage to Sibylla of Jerusalem, and of Cyprus from 1192 to 1194...
, whose older brother Amalric of Lusignan
Amalric II of Jerusalem
Amalric II of Jerusalem or Amalric I of Cyprus, born Amalric of Lusignan , King of Jerusalem 1197–1205, was an older brother of Guy of Lusignan....
was already an established figure at court.
The dispute affected William, since he had been appointed chancellor by Raymond and may have fallen out of favour after Raymond was removed from the regency. When Patriarch Amalric died on 6 October 1180, the two most obvious choices for his successor were William and Heraclius of Caesarea. They were fairly evenly matched in background and education, but politically they were allied with opposite parties, as Heraclius was one of Agnes of Courtenay's supporters. It seems that the canons of the Holy Sepulchre were unable to decide, and asked the king for advice; due to Agnes' influence, Heraclius was elected. There were rumours that Agnes and Heraclius were lovers, but this information comes from the partisan 13th-century continuations of the Historia, and there is no other evidence to substantiate such a claim. William himself says almost nothing about the election and Heraclius' character or his subsequent patriarchate, probably reflecting his disappointment at the outcome.
Death
William remained archbishop of Tyre and chancellor of the kingdom, but the details of his life at this time are obscure. The 13th-century continuatorContinuator
A continuator, in literature, is a writer who creates a new work based on someone else's prior text, such as a novel or novel fragment. The new work may complete the older work , or may try to serve as a sequel or prequel to the older work A continuator, in literature, is a writer who creates a new...
s claim that Heraclius excommunicated William in 1183, but it is unknown why Heraclius would have done this. They also claim that William went to Rome to appeal to the Pope, where Heraclius had him poisoned. According to Peter Edbury and John Rowe, the obscurity of William's life during these years shows that he did not play a large political role, but concentrated on ecclesiastical affairs and the writing of his history. The story of his excommunication, and the unlikely detail that he was poisoned, were probably an invention of the Old French continuators. William remained in the kingdom and continued to write up until 1184, but by then Jerusalem was internally divided by political factions and externally surrounded by the forces of Saladin, and "the only subjects that present themselves are the disasters of a sorrowing country and its manifold misfortunes, themes which can serve only to draw forth lamentations and tears."
His importance had dwindled with the victory of Agnes and her supporters, and with the accession of Baldwin V
Baldwin V of Jerusalem
Baldwin V of Jerusalem was the son of Sibylla of Jerusalem and her first husband, William of Montferrat...
, infant son of Sibylla and William of Montferrat. Baldwin was a sickly child and he died the next year. In 1186 he was succeeded by his mother Sibylla and her second husband Guy of Lusignan, ruling jointly. William was probably in failing health by this point. Rudolf Hiestand discovered that the date of William's death was 29 September, but the year was not recorded; whatever the year, there was a new chancellor in May 1185 and a new archbishop of Tyre by 21 October 1186. Hans Mayer concluded that William died in 1186, and this is the year generally accepted by scholars.
William's foresight about the misfortunes of his country was proven correct less than a year later. Saladin defeated King Guy at the Battle of Hattin
Battle of Hattin
The Battle of Hattin took place on Saturday, July 4, 1187, between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the forces of the Ayyubid dynasty....
in 1187, and went on to capture Jerusalem
Siege of Jerusalem (1187)
On July 4, 1187 the Kingdom's army was defeated at the Battle of Hattin by Saladin and only Balian of Ibelin commanding a small number of soldiers remained in Jerusalem. The Siege of Jerusalem lasted from September 20 to October 2, 1187. On October 2, 1187 Balian of Ibelin surrendered Jerusalem to...
and almost every other city of the kingdom, except the seat of William's archdiocese, Tyre. News of the fall of Jerusalem shocked Europe and plans were made to send assistance. According to Roger of Wendover
Roger of Wendover
Roger of Wendover , probably a native of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, was an English chronicler of the 13th century.At an uncertain date he became a monk at St Albans Abbey; afterwards he was appointed prior of the cell of Belvoir, but he forfeited this dignity in the early years of Henry III,...
, William was present at Gisors
Gisors
Gisors is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located northwest from the center of Paris.Gisors, together with the neighbouring communes of Trie-Château and Trie-la-Ville, form an urban area of 12,669 inhabitants...
in France in 1188 when Henry II of England
Henry II of England
Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...
and Philip II of France
Philip II of France
Philip II Augustus was the King of France from 1180 until his death. A member of the House of Capet, Philip Augustus was born at Gonesse in the Val-d'Oise, the son of Louis VII and his third wife, Adela of Champagne...
agreed to go on crusade
Third Crusade
The Third Crusade , also known as the Kings' Crusade, was an attempt by European leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin...
: "Thereupon the king of the English first took the sign of the cross at the hands of the Archbishop of Rheims and William of Tyre, the latter of whom had been entrusted by our lord the pope with the office of legate in the affairs of the crusade in the western part of Europe." Roger was however mistaken; he knew that an unnamed archbishop of Tyre was present and assumed it must have been the William whose chronicle he possessed, although the archbishop in question was actually William's successor Joscius
Joscius, Archbishop of Tyre
Joscius was Archbishop of Tyre in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the late 12th century.He was a canon and subdeacon of the church of Acre, and became Bishop of Acre on November 23, 1172. He was a member of the delegation from the Latin church of the Crusader states at the Third Lateran...
.
Works
William reports that he wrote an account of the Third Council of the Lateran, which does not survive. He also wrote a history of the Holy Land from the time of MuhammadMuhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
up to 1184, for which he used Eutychius of Alexandria as his main source. This work seems to have been known in Europe in the 13th century but it also does not survive. August C. Krey thought William's Arabic sources may have come from the library of the Damascene diplomat Usama ibn Munqidh, whose library was looted by Baldwin III from a shipwreck in 1154. Alan V. Murray, however, has argued that, at least for the accounts of Persia and the Turks in his chronicle, William relied on Biblical and earlier medieval legends rather than actual history, and his knowledge "may be less indicative of eastern ethnography than of western mythography."
Latin chronicle
William's great work is a Latin chronicle, written between 1170 and 1184. It contains twenty-three books; the final book, which deals with the events of 1183 and the beginning of 1184, has only a prologue and one chapter, so it is either unfinished or the rest of the pages were lost before the whole chronicle began to be copied. The first book begins with the conquest of SyriaMuslim conquest of Syria
The Muslim conquest of Syria occurred in the first half of the 7th century, and refers to the region known as the Bilad al-Sham, the Levant, or Greater Syria...
by Umar
Umar
`Umar ibn al-Khattāb c. 2 November , was a leading companion and adviser to the Islamic prophet Muhammad who later became the second Muslim Caliph after Muhammad's death....
in the seventh century, but otherwise the work deals with the advent of the First Crusade
First Crusade
The First Crusade was a military expedition by Western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquest of the Levant, ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem...
and the subsequent political history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It is arranged, but was not written, chronologically; the first sections to be written were probably the chapters about the invasion of Egypt in 1167, which are extremely detailed and were likely composed before the Fatimid dynasty was overthrown in 1171. Much of the Historia was finished before William left to attend the Lateran Council, but new additions and corrections were made after his return in 1180, perhaps because he now realized that European readers would also be interested in the history of the kingdom. In 1184 he wrote the Prologue and the beginning of the twenty-third book.
William had access to the chronicles of the First Crusade, including Fulcher of Chartres
Fulcher of Chartres
Fulcher of Chartres was a chronicler of the First Crusade. He wrote in Latin.- Life :His appointment as chaplain of Baldwin of Boulogne in 1097 suggests that he had been trained as a priest, most likely at the school in Chartres...
, Albert of Aix
Albert of Aix
Albert of Aix-la-Chapelle or Albert of Aachen , historian of the First Crusade, was born during the later part of the 11th century, and afterwards became canon and custos of the church of Aachen....
, Raymond of Aguilers
Raymond of Aguilers
Raymond of Aguilers was a chronicler of the First Crusade . He followed the Provençal army of crusaders, guided by count Raymond IV of Toulouse, to Jerusalem....
, Baldric of Dol
Baldric of Dol
Baldric of Dol was abbot of Bourgueil from 1079 to 1106, then bishop of Dol-en-Bretagne from 1107 until his death....
, and the Gesta Francorum
Gesta Francorum
The so-called Gesta Francorum or in full De Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum is a Latin chronicle of the First Crusade written in circa 1100-1101 by an anonymous author connected with Bohemund I of Antioch.It narrates the events of the First Crusade from the inception in November...
, as well as other documents located in the kingdom's archives. He used Walter the Chancellor
Walter the Chancellor
Walter the Chancellor was a French or Norman crusader and author of the twelfth century....
and other now-lost works for the history of the Principality of Antioch
Principality of Antioch
The Principality of Antioch, including parts of modern-day Turkey and Syria, was one of the crusader states created during the First Crusade.-Foundation:...
. From the end of Fulcher's chronicle in 1127, William is the only source of information from an author living in Jerusalem. For events that happened in William's own lifetime, he interviewed older people who had witnessed the events about which he was writing, and drew on his own memory.
William's classical education allowed him to compose Latin superior to that of many medieval writers. He used numerous ancient Roman and early Christian authors, either for quotations or as inspiration for the framework and organization of the Historia. His vocabulary is almost entirely classical, with only a few medieval constructions such as "loricator" (someone who makes armour, a calque
Calque
In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
of the Arabic "zarra") and "assellare" (to empty one's bowels). He was capable of clever word-play and advanced rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
al devices, but he was prone to repetition of a number of words and phrases. His writing also shows phrasing and spelling which is unusual or unknown in purely classical Latin but not uncommon in medieval Latin
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...
, such as:
- confusion between reflexive and possessive pronouns;
- confusion over the use of the accusativeAccusative caseThe accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
and ablative caseAblative caseIn linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...
s, especially after the preposition in; - collapsed diphthongDiphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s (i.e. the Latin diphthongs ae and oe are spelled simply e); - the dativeDative caseThe dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
"mihi" ("to me") is spelled "michi"; - a single "s" is often doubled, for example in the adjectival place-name ending which he often spells "-enssis"; this spelling is also used to represent the Arabic "shShin (letter)Shin literally means "Sharp" ; It is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Aramaic/Hebrew , and Arabic ....
", a sound which Latin lacks, for example in the name ShawarShawarShawar was a ruler of Egypt, the vizier, from December 1162 until he was assassinated in 1169. He is best known for being part of the three-way power struggle during the Crusades between the Christian King Amalric I of Jerusalem and Shirkuh, a Syrian general and uncle of the man who was to become...
which he spells "Ssauar".
Literary themes and biases
Despite his quotations from Christian authors and from the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, William did not place much emphasis on the intervention of God in human affairs, resulting in a somewhat "secular" history. Nevertheless, he included much information that is clearly legendary, especially when referring to the First Crusade, which even in his own day was already considered an age of great Christian heroes. Expanding on the accounts of Albert of Aix, Peter the Hermit
Peter the Hermit
Peter the Hermit was a priest of Amiens and a key figure during the First Crusade.-Before 1096:According to Anna Comnena, he had attempted to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem before 1096, but was prevented by the Seljuk Turks from reaching his goal and was tortured.Sources differ as to whether he...
is given prominence in the preaching of the First Crusade, to the point that it was he, not Pope Urban II
Pope Urban II
Pope Urban II , born Otho de Lagery , was Pope from 12 March 1088 until his death on July 29 1099...
, who originally conceived the crusade. Godfrey of Bouillon, the first ruler of crusader Jerusalem, was also depicted as the leader of the crusade from the beginning, and William attributed to him legendary strength and virtue. This reflected the almost mythological status that Godfrey and the other first crusaders held for the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the late twelfth century.
William gave a more nuanced picture of the kings of his own day. He claimed to have been commissioned to write by King Amalric himself, but William did not allow himself to praise the king excessively; for example, Amalric did not respect the rights of the church, and although he was a good military commander, he could not stop the increasing threat from the neighbouring Muslim states. On a personal level, William admired the king's education and his interest in history and law, but also noted that Amalric had "breasts like those of a woman hanging down to his waist" and was shocked when the king questioned the resurrection of the dead
Resurrection of the dead
Resurrection of the Dead is a belief found in a number of eschatologies, most commonly in Christian, Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian. In general, the phrase refers to a specific event in the future; multiple prophesies in the histories of these religions assert that the dead will be brought back to...
.
About Amalric's son Baldwin IV, however, "there was no ambiguity". Baldwin was nothing but heroic in the face of his debilitating leprosy, and he led military campaigns against Saladin even while still underaged; William tends to gloss over campaigns where Baldwin was not actually in charge, preferring to direct his praise towards the afflicted king rather than subordinate commanders. William's history can be seen as an apologia, a literary defense, for the kingdom, and more specifically for Baldwin's rule. By the 1170s and 1180s, western Europeans were reluctant to support the kingdom, partly because it was far away and there were more pressing concerns in Europe, but also because leprosy was usually considered divine punishment.
William was famously biased against the Knights Templar
Knights Templar
The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar, the Order of the Temple or simply as Templars, were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...
, whom he believed to be arrogant and disrespectful of both secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies, as they were not required to pay tithes and were legally accountable only to the Pope. Although he was writing decades later, he is the earliest author to describe the actual foundation of the Templar order. He was generally favourable towards them when discussing their early days, but resented the power and influence they held in his own time. William accused them of hindering the Siege of Ascalon
Siege of Ascalon
The Siege of Ascalon took place in 1153, resulting in the capture of that Egyptian fortress by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.-Background:...
in 1153; of poorly defending a cave-fortress in 1165, for which twelve Templars were hanged by King Amalric; of sabotaging the invasion of Egypt
Crusader invasions of Egypt
The Crusader invasion of Egypt was a series of campaigns undertaken by the Kingdom of Jerusalem to strengthen its position in the Levant by taking advantage of the weakness of Fatimid Egypt....
in 1168; and of murdering Assassin ambassadors in 1173.
Compared to other Latin authors of the twelfth century, William is surprisingly favourable to the Byzantine Empire. He had visited the Byzantine court as an official ambassador and probably knew more about Byzantine affairs than any other Latin chronicler. He shared the poor opinion of Alexius I Comnenus that had developed during the First Crusade, although he was also critical of some of the crusaders' dealings with Alexius. He was more impressed by Alexius' son John II Comnenus; he did not approve of John's attempts to bring the crusader Principality of Antioch under Byzantine control, but John's military expeditions against the Muslim states, the common enemy of both Greeks and Latins, were considered admirable. Emperor Manuel, whom William met during his visits to Constantinople, was portrayed more ambivalently, much like King Amalric. William admired him personally, but recognized that the Empire was powerless to help Jerusalem against the Muslim forces of Nur ad-Din and Saladin. William was especially disappointed in the failure of the joint campaign against Egypt in 1169. The end of the Historia coincides with the massacre of the Latins
Massacre of the Latins
The Massacre of the Latins occurred in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in May 1182. It was a large-scale massacre of the Roman Catholic or "Latin" merchants and their families, who at that time dominated the city's maritime trade and financial sector...
in Constantinople and the chaos that followed the coup of Andronicus I Comnenus, and in his description of those events, William was certainly not immune to the extreme anti-Greek rhetoric that was often found in Western European sources.
As a medieval Christian author William could hardly avoid hostility towards the kingdom's Muslim neighbours, but as an educated man who lived among Muslims in the east, he was rarely polemical or completely dismissive of Islam. He did not think Muslims were pagans, but rather that they belonged to a heretical sect of Christianity and followed the teachings of a false prophet. He often praised the Muslim leaders of his own day, even if he lamented their power over the Christian kingdom; thus Muslim rulers such as Mu'in ad-Din Unur
Mu'in ad-Din Unur
Mu'in ad-Din Unur al-Atabeki was the ruler of Damascus in the mid-12th century.-Origins:Mu'in ad-Din was originally a Mameluk in the army of Toghtekin, the founder of the Burid Dynasty of Damascus. When Zengi, the atabeg of Aleppo, besieged Damascus in 1135, Mu'in ad-Din was at the head of army...
, Nur ad-Din, Shirkuh
Shirkuh
Asad ad-Din Shirkuh bin Shadhi , also known as Shêrko or "Shêrgo" was an important Kurdish military commander, and uncle of Saladin....
, and even Jerusalem's ultimate conqueror Saladin are presented as honourable and pious men, characteristics that William did not bestow on many of his own Christian contemporaries.
Circulation of the chronicle
After William's death the Historia was copied and circulated in the crusader states and was eventually brought to Europe. In the 13th century, James of Vitry had access to a copy while he was bishop of Acre, and it was used by Guy of BazochesGuy of Bazoches
Guy of Bazoches was a French cleric of the Champagne region, and writer in Latin. He was a canon of Châlons-sur-Marne.He was a chronicler, of the Third Crusade in particular, in which he had taken part in the retinue of Henry II of Champagne, a poet, and a letter writer.-References:*Georg Heinrich...
, Matthew Paris
Matthew Paris
Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire...
, and Roger of Wendover
Roger of Wendover
Roger of Wendover , probably a native of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, was an English chronicler of the 13th century.At an uncertain date he became a monk at St Albans Abbey; afterwards he was appointed prior of the cell of Belvoir, but he forfeited this dignity in the early years of Henry III,...
in their own chronicles. However, there are only ten known manuscripts that contain the Latin chronicle, all of which come from France and England, so William's work may not have been very widely read in its original form. In England, however, the Historia was expanded in Latin, with additional information from the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi
Itinerarium Regis Ricardi
The Itinerarium Regis Ricardi is a Latin prose narrative of the Third Crusade, 1189-1192. The first part of the book concentrates on Saladin's conquests and the early stages of the crusade, with a long description of the expedition of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa...
, and the chronicle of Roger Hoveden; this version was written around 1220.
It is unknown what title William himself gave his chronicle, although one group of manuscripts uses Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum and another uses Historia Ierosolimitana. The Latin text was printed for the first time in Basel in 1549 by Nicholas Brylinger; it was also published in the Gesta Dei per Francos by Jacques Bongars
Jacques Bongars
Jacques Bongars , French scholar and diplomatist, was born at Orléans, and was brought up in the reformed faith. He obtained his early education at Marburg and Jena, and returning to France continued his studies at Orléans and Bourges...
in 1611 and the Recueil des historiens des croisades
Recueil des Historiens des Croisades
The Recueil des Historiens des Croisades is a major collection of several thousand medieval documents written during the Crusades. The documents were collected and published in Paris in the late 19th century, and include documents in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Old French, and Armenian...
(RHC) by Auguste-Arthur Beugnot and Auguste Le Prévost
Auguste Le Prévost
Auguste Le Prévost was a French geologist, philologist, archaeologist and historian....
in 1844, and Bongars' text was reprinted in the Patrologia Latina
Patrologia Latina
The Patrologia Latina is an enormous collection of the writings of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1844 and 1855, with indices published between 1862 and 1865....
by Jacques Paul Migne
Jacques Paul Migne
Jacques Paul Migne was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely-distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a universal library for the Catholic priesthood.He was born at Saint-Flour, Cantal and studied...
in 1855. The now-standard Latin critical edition, based on six of the surviving manuscripts, was published as Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon in the Corpus Christianorum
Corpus Christianorum
The Corpus Christianorum is a major publishing undertaking of the Belgian publisher Brepols devoted to patristic and medieval Latin texts. The principal series are the Series Graeca , Series Latina , and the Continuatio Mediaevalis...
in 1986, by R. B. C. Huygens, with notes by Hans E. Mayer and Gerhard Rösch. The RHC edition was translated into English by Emily A. Babcock and August C. Krey in 1943 as "A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea," although the translation is sometimes incomplete or inexact.
Old French translation
A translation of the Historia into Old French, made around 1223, was particularly well-circulated and had many anonymous additions made to it in the 13th century. In contrast to the surviving Latin manuscripts, there are "at least fifty-nine manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts" containing the Old French translation. There are also independent French continuations attributed to ErnoulErnoul
Ernoul is the name generally given to the author of a chronicle of the late 12th century dealing with the fall of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.-Biography:Ernoul himself is mentioned only once in history, and only in his own chronicle...
and Bernard le Trésorier. The translation was sometimes called the Livre dou conqueste; it was known by this name throughout Europe as well as in the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus
Kingdom of Cyprus
The Kingdom of Cyprus was a Crusader kingdom on the island of Cyprus in the high and late Middle Ages, between 1192 and 1489. It was ruled by the French House of Lusignan.-History:...
and in Cilician Armenia, and 14th-century Venetian geographer Marino Sanuto the Elder
Marino Sanuto the Elder
Marino Sanuto or Sanudo the Elder of Torcello was a Venetian statesman and geographer.He is best known for his life-long attempts to revive the crusading spirit and movement; with this object he wrote his great work, the Secreta Fidelium Crucis, otherwise called Historia Hierosolymitana, Liber de...
had a copy of it. The French was further translated into Spanish, as the Gran Conquista de Ultramar, during the reign of Alfonso the Wise of Castile
Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X was a Castilian monarch who ruled as the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1252 until his death...
in the late 13th century. The French version was so widespread that the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
author Francesco Pipino translated it back into Latin, unaware that a Latin original already existed. A Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
translation of the French was made by William Caxton
William Caxton
William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...
in the 15th century.
Modern assessment
William's neutrality as an historian was often taken for granted until the late twentieth century. August C. Krey, for example, believed that "his impartiality ... is scarcely less impressive than his critical skill." Despite this excellent reputation, D. W. T. C. Vessey has shown that William was certainly not an impartial observer, especially when dealing with the events of the 1170s and 1180s. Vessey believes that William's claim to have been commissioned by Amalric is a typical ancient and medieval toposTopos
In mathematics, a topos is a type of category that behaves like the category of sheaves of sets on a topological space...
, or literary theme, in which a wise ruler, a lover of history and literature, wishes to preserve for posterity the grand deeds of his reign. William's claims of impartiality are also a typical topos in ancient and medieval historical writing.
His depiction of Baldwin IV as a hero is an attempt "to vindicate the politics of his own party and to blacken those of its opponents." As mentioned above, William was opposed to Baldwin's mother Agnes of Courtenay, Patriarch Heraclius, and their supporters; his interpretation of events during Baldwin's reign was previously taken as fact almost without question. In the mid twentieth century, Marshall W. Baldwin, Steven Runciman
Steven Runciman
The Hon. Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman CH — known as Steven Runciman — was a British historian known for his work on the Middle Ages...
, and Hans E. Mayer were influential in perpetuating this point of view, although the more recent re-evaluations of this period by Vessey, Peter Edbury and Bernard Hamilton have undone much of William's influence.
An often-noted flaw in the Historia is William's poor memory for dates. "Chronology is sometimes confused, and dates are given wrongly", even for basic information such as the regnal dates of the kings of Jerusalem. For example, William gives the date of Amalric's death as 11 July 1173, when it actually occurred in 1174.
Despite his biases and errors, William "has always been considered one of the greatest medieval writers." Steven Runciman
Steven Runciman
The Hon. Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman CH — known as Steven Runciman — was a British historian known for his work on the Middle Ages...
wrote that "he had a broad vision; he understood the significance of the great events of his time and the sequence of cause and effect in history." Christopher Tyerman calls him "the historian's historian", and "the greatest crusade historian of all," and Bernard Hamilton says he "is justly considered one of the finest historians of the Middle Ages". As the Dictionary of the Middle Ages
Dictionary of the Middle Ages
The Dictionary of the Middle Ages is a 13-volume encyclopedia of the Middle Ages published by the American Council of Learned Societies between 1982 and 1989. It was first conceived and started in 1975 with American medieval historian Joseph Strayer of Princeton University as editor-in-chief...
says, "William's achievements in assembling and evaluating sources, and in writing in excellent and original Latin a critical and judicious (if chronologically faulty) narrative, make him an outstanding historian, superior by medieval, and not inferior by modern, standards of scholarship."
Primary sources
- William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey. Columbia University Press, 1943.
- Willemi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon, ed. R. B. C. Huygens. 2 vols. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, vols. 38 & 38a. Turnholt: Brepols, 1986. Latin text with introduction and notes in French.
- L'Estoire d'Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d'Outremer, in Recueil des historiens des croisadesRecueil des Historiens des CroisadesThe Recueil des Historiens des Croisades is a major collection of several thousand medieval documents written during the Crusades. The documents were collected and published in Paris in the late 19th century, and include documents in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Old French, and Armenian...
, Historiens occidentaux, vols. I-II (1844, 1859). - J. A. Giles, trans. Roger of WendoverRoger of WendoverRoger of Wendover , probably a native of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, was an English chronicler of the 13th century.At an uncertain date he became a monk at St Albans Abbey; afterwards he was appointed prior of the cell of Belvoir, but he forfeited this dignity in the early years of Henry III,...
's Flowers of History. London, 1849. - La Chronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. Louis de Mas Latrie. Paris, 1871.
- Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs, ed. Alexis Paulin ParisAlexis Paulin ParisAlexis Paulin Paris , was a French scholar and author.He was born at Avenay . He studied classics in Reims and law in Paris. He published in 1824 an Apologie pour l'école romantique and took an active part in Parisian journalism...
. Paris, 1879–1880. - Margaret Ruth Morgan, La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197). Paris, 1982.
- Helen J. Nicholson, ed. The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: The Itinerarium Peregrinorum and the Gesta Regis Ricardi. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997.
- Janet Shirley, Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century: The Rothelin Continuation of the History of William of Tyre with part of the Eracles or Acre text. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999.
Secondary sources
- John Carl Andressohn, The Ancestry and Life of Godfrey of Bouillon. Indiana University Publications, Social Science Series 5, 1947.
- Thomas AsbridgeThomas AsbridgeThomas Asbridge is a University of London medieval history scholar. He is the author of The First Crusade: A New History, a book which describes the background, events, and consequences of the First Crusade, "The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land", a book providing a view on the crusading...
, The First Crusade: A New History. Oxford University Press, 2004. - Susan M. Babbitt, "William of Tyre." Dictionary of the Middle AgesDictionary of the Middle AgesThe Dictionary of the Middle Ages is a 13-volume encyclopedia of the Middle Ages published by the American Council of Learned Societies between 1982 and 1989. It was first conceived and started in 1975 with American medieval historian Joseph Strayer of Princeton University as editor-in-chief...
, ed. Joseph StrayerJoseph StrayerJoseph Reese Strayer was an American medievalist historian. He was a student of, and mentored by, Charles H. Haskins, America's first prominent medievalist historian.-Life:...
. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989, vol. 12. - Marshall W. Baldwin, "The Decline and Fall of Jerusalem, 1174–1189." A History of the Crusades (gen. ed. Kenneth M. Setton), vol. 1: The First Hundred Years (ed. Marshall W. Baldwin). University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
- Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
- Frederic Duncalf, "The First Crusade: Clermont to Constantinople." A History of the Crusades (gen. ed. Kenneth M. Setton), vol. 1: The First Hundred Years (ed. Marshall W. Baldwin). University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
- Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe, "William of Tyre and the Patriarchal election of 1180." The English Historical Review 93 (1978), repr. Kingdoms of the Crusaders: From Jerusalem to Cyprus (Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum Collected Series Studies, 1999), pp. 1–25.
- Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- Peter W. Edbury, "Propaganda and faction in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: the background to Hattin." Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller (Leiden: Brill, 1993), repr. in Kingdoms of the Crusaders: From Jerusalem to Cyprus (Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum Collected Series Studies, 1999), pp. 173–189.
- Peter W. Edbury, "The French translation of William of Tyre's Historia: the manuscript tradition." Crusades 6 (2007).
- Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and his Heirs. Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 2000. - Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Harvard University Press, 1927; repr. Meridian Books, 1966.
- Rudolf Hiestand, "Zum Leben und Laufbahn Wilhelms von Tyrus." Deutsches Archiv 34 (1978), pp. 345–380.
- R. B. C. Huygens, "Guillaume de Tyr étudiant: un chapître (XIX, 12) de son Histoire retrouvé." Latomus 21 (1962), pp. 811–829.
- R. B. C. Huygens, "Editing William of Tyre." Sacris Erudiri 27 (1984), pp. 461–473.
- G. A. Loud and J. W. Cox, "The 'Lost' Autobiographical Chapter of William of Tyre's Chronicle (Book XIX.12)." The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan V. Murray (ABC-Clio, 2006), vol. 4, Appendix: Texts and Documents #4, pp. 1305–1308.
- Hans E. Mayer, "Guillaume de Tyr à l’école." Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Dijon 117 (1985–86), repr. Kings and Lords in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Aldershot: Ashgate, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 1994), pp. 257–265.
- Hans E. Mayer, "Zum Tode Wilhelms von Tyrus." Archiv für Diplomatik 5–6 (1959–1960), pp. 182–201.
- Hans E. Mayer, The Crusades, 2nd ed., trans. John Gillingham. Oxford University Press, 1988.
- Margaret Ruth Morgan, The Chronicle of Ernoul and the Continuations of William of Tyre. Oxford University Press, 1973.
- Alan V. Murray, "William of Tyre and the origin of the Turks: on the sources of the Gesta Orientalium Principum," in Dei gesta Per Francos: Études sur les crioisades dédiées à Jean Richard/Crusade Studies in Honour of Jean Richard, edd. Michel Balard, Benjamin Z. Kedar and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 217-229.
- Alan V. Murray, "William of Tyre." The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan V. Murray (ABC-Clio, 2006), vol. 4.
- Helen J. Nicholson, "William of Tyre." Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, ed. Kelly Boyd. Taylor & Francis, 1999, vol. 2.
- Hans PrutzHans PrutzHans Prutz was a German historian.Son of Robert Eduard Prutz , the essayist and historian, Hans was born at Jena, and was educated at the universities of Jena and Berlin....
, "Studien über Wilhelm von Tyrus." Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 8 (1883), pp. 91–132. - Steven RuncimanSteven RuncimanThe Hon. Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman CH — known as Steven Runciman — was a British historian known for his work on the Middle Ages...
, A History of the Crusades, volume 1: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press, 1951. - Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, volume 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East. Cambridge University Press, 1952.
- R. C. Schwinges, "William of Tyre, the Muslim enemy, and the problem of tolerance." Tolerance and Intolerance. Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, ed. Michael Gervers and James M. Powell, Syracuse University Press, 2001.
- Christopher Tyerman, The Invention of the Crusades. University of Toronto Press, 1998.
- Christopher Tyerman, God's War: A New History of the Crusades. Penguin, 2006.
- Jacques Verger, "The birth of the universities". A History of the University in Europe, vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. Hilde de Ridder-Symoens. Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 47–55.
- D. W. T. C. Vessey, "William of Tyre and the art of historiography." Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973), pp. 433–455.
External links
- Excerpts from the Historia from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook
- Fiasco at Damascus 1148 from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook
- Latin version from the Patrologia LatinaPatrologia LatinaThe Patrologia Latina is an enormous collection of the writings of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1844 and 1855, with indices published between 1862 and 1865....
, via The Latin LibraryThe Latin LibraryThe Latin Library is a website that collects public domain Latin texts. The texts have been drawn from different sources. Many were originally scanned and formatted from texts in the Public Domain. Others have been downloaded from various sites on the Internet . Most of the recent texts have been...
- Latin version from Crusades-Encyclopedia.com
- Latin version with concordance from Intertext.com
- Old French translation and continuation from Internet Medieval Sourcebook
- English translation by E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey, from ACLS Humanities E-Books (login required)