William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East

Cities as Palimpsests?: Responses to Antiquity in Eastern Mediterranean Urbanism , 2022

When writing the history of his native Kingdom of Jerusalem, Archbishop William of Tyre (c.1130-1186) frequently included extended descriptions of the cities encountered by Crusaders in the Eastern Mediterranean. This paper will investigate the way in which William’s self-identification as a Latin and his extensive education in the universities of Western Europe at the height of the ‘twelfth-century renaissance’ shaped his treatment of the cities of the land in which he was born and raised. William frequently chose to focus on the ancient past of these cities, privileging a reading of the urban landscape that was biblical and classical, to which the crusaders were the natural heirs. Nonetheless, a close reading of the work reveals William’s inability to completely efface the Byzantine and Islamic histories of the cities, disrupting and confusing his orderly account of the urban past. William’s history therefore provides a sense of the complex ways in which the Franks of the Latin East positioned themselves within the long histories of the cities in which they lived.

Medieval Encounters, 2022

This article examines the representation of Jerusalemite identity in William of Tyre’s Historia Ierosolymitana (c.1184). William laments that his contemporaries in Jerusalem did not live up to the standards of their forefathers anymore: they were not wise, virtuous men, but put their own needs before those of the community. In doing so, William makes use of a narrative strategy that is found in the Roman historians Livy and Sallust as well. In the histories of Livy and Sallust, it was contact with the Near East that prompted societal decline. The riches and dolce far niente of the East had, in their eyes, corrupted Roman morals. In William’s work, by contrast, the Eastern Other often functions as a mirror for the Self. This, in combination with William’s emphasis on former generations as reference point for the current generation allows for a much more dynamic interplay of identities than an orientalist binary East-West division.

Crusades, 2019

In this article I closely analyze the vocabulary William of Tyre used in the Chronicon to describe the groups that opposed and those that supported the kingdom of Jerusalem. William offers a varied and specific vocabulary for the opponents of the Franks, preferring geographic terms like Turci and Egyptii to infideles and Sarraceni. An analysis of hostes reveals that William did not include Christians in the generic category of "the enemy"; however, I argue that, in light of how he uses other terms, this division reflects his acknowledgment of geo-political realities rather than a simple religious bigotry against Muslims. William's use of nostri, Christiani, Latini, and Franci reveals that he possessed a somewhat pragmatic understanding of his own identity. At the core, he considered himself to be an eastern Latin Christian, but throughout the work we can see his self-identity expand to encompass all Christians, or narrow to include only Latins of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The language of the Chronicon does not support the view that the Franks divided the world into two undifferentiated groups of good Christians and bad everyone else. William instead evinces a flexible conception of identity capable of inclusivity and cultural discernment as well as intolerance.

2012

While the Latin version of William of Tyre's chronicle of the Latin East, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, is a valuable tool for modern historians, it was not particularly well-known during the medieval period with only nine copies surviving. However, William's history did become extremely popular through a translation of the original into Old French, the so-called L'Estoire de Eracles, with fifty-one surviving manuscripts. The Eracles text has been overlooked by scholars who have assumed that it is a simple translation of William's text, and there has also been little work in to establishing a provenance for the translation or determining the translator's motives. This thesis seeks to identify the extent to which the Eracles is a simple translation and assess its importance to historians. While, for the most part, the translator is faithful to William's text, he made alterations throughout. Many are of a stylistic nature, and the translator did not simply abridge William's text for a new audience. He made several additions that serve to identify him and his audience. In particular, he regularly added background material on French crusaders, and on events in France, including additional information not found in any other source. On occasion the translator alters William's criticism of certain individuals and gives a very different version of events that may be more accurate. The major difficulty with studying the Eracles text is the fact that the nineteenthcentury editions were reliant upon a limited number of manuscripts. There has been little work on these manuscripts and no clear understanding of the relationships between these manuscripts. This thesis also seeks to tackle this problem by presenting a critical edition of six sample chapters that takes into account all the surviving manuscripts and by establishing the relationships between these manuscripts.

2014

This volume celebrates Peter Edbury’s career by bringing together seventeen essays by colleagues, former students and friends which focus on three of his major research interests: the great historian of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, William of Tyre, and his Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum and its continuations; medieval Cyprus, in particular under the Lusignans; and the Military Orders in the Middle Ages. All based on original research, the contributions to this volume include new work on manuscripts, ranging from a Hospitaller rental document of the twelfth century to a seventeenth-century manuscript of Cypriot interest; studies of language and terminology in William of Tyre’s chronicle and its continuations; thematic surveys; legal and commercial investigations pertaining to Cyprus; aspects of memorialization, and biographical studies. These contributions are bracketed by a foreword written by Peter Edbury’s PhD supervisor, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and an appreciation of Peter’s own publications by Christopher Tyerman.

Al-Masāq, 2018

When William, the Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem, wrote his chronicles in the late twelfth century, a word for crusade had not yet been created. But William knew what he was writing about. He was shaping the memory among Latin Christians in both the Levant and Western Europe of “the brave men who went out from the kingdoms of the West”. From the late twelfth century to the mid-twentieth, this has been a fair description of scholarship on the Crusades as well; it focused largely on manly military deeds, and the field of operations was fixed on Jerusalem and the Levant, with brief forays to Constantinople, Egypt and Tunis. But William was also writing a history of his homeland, the kingdom of Jerusalem, and his account presented a beguiling model of history that intermingled the alternately glorious and disastrous narrative of the military campaigns to liberate and defend Jerusalem with the history of the kingdom itself. This fusion was not accidental, nor without consequences. William of Tyre sought to ensure that Western Europe would remain engaged in the defence of Jerusalem, and his chronicle was an extended plea for assistance in the face of the growing strength of S alāh al-Dīn. But William was also the author of a history of Islamic rule in the Levant, which he composed alongside his history of the kingdom as a parallel and a prelude. While this history has not survived, it suggests a dual perspective that has been lost in modern historiography, a sense that William saw his own history—he was born in Syria—as both a part of crusading which began in Latin Europe and also as a part of Near Eastern history

2018

For nearly two centuries after the First Crusade, a Latin-Christian elite controlled significant parts of the eastern Mediterranean, home to a diverse array of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. While seemingly a rich context for inter-religious cultural exchange, the dominant historical narrative has called this society a form of “proto-Apartheid,” with Frankish rulers successfully erecting impermeable boundaries between themselves and their largely Arabic-speaking subjects. This dissertation challenges this narrative through an investigation of the life and work of William of Tripoli, a thirteenth-century Dominican born in modern Lebanon, who spent his career evangelizing Muslims from a priory in Akko (Acre, Israel). William wrote two treatises on Islam that have been called “peculiar,” because of their positive portrayal of both the Qurʾān and the Prophet Muḥammad, but have not otherwise been integrated into our understanding of the cultural milieu of the Latin East. I argue that the...

History, 2017

Volumes such as this are all too rare in the present age, in which research assessments set the agenda and scholars are encouraged to prioritize their own 'original' research over service to the wider academic community. For this reason alone, we are all greatly indebted to Lynda Rollason and the contributors to this fine book. It contains not only the first scholarly edition and discussion of the Thorney Liber Vitae, but also colour and black-and-white plates of the entire manuscript (the latter annotated to show different hands). The reader is thus not only presented with an accurate text, but also has the ability to follow the arguments made by the commentators, palaeographical or otherwise. This makes the volume an invaluable research tool, one which will find a welcome place in all serious research libraries. The Thorney Liber Vitae is, of course, no stranger to scholarship. Its importance was already grasped by Dorothy Whitelock, who dedicated a typically insightful article to the subject in 1940, and the edition and discussion builds on preliminary work by no fewer than three scholars: Cecily Clark, Olof van Feilitzen and Neil Keir. Striking new findings are, therefore, not to be expected. Rather, the signal contribution of the volume lies in presenting and discussing this material in greater detail, revisiting old finds and situating lesser-known individuals and entries more firmly in their immediate textual and historical context. The volume opens with a detailed historical introduction by the editor, which is followed by an appraisal of the manuscript by Richard Gameson, an assessment of the personal names by Olof von Feilitzen and John Insley (the latter revising the former's unfinished work), and a prosopographical introduction by Katherine Keats-Rohan. These are not designed as exhaustive treatments, but rather as background to the critical edition, which then follows. The heart of the book, however, lies in the ensuing commentaries, which constitute some 180 pages. It is here that we find the minute palaeographical analysis which underpins Gameson's more general observations, and it is here too that we find a full onomasticon (by von Feilitzen, as revised and corrected by Insley) and prosopography (by Keats-Rohan). There are also shorter notes on matters of specific interest, such the entry for Thurstan the moneyer and the Thorney relic list. this subject should take steps to read this eminently readable book, which is well illustrated with maps and images of ecclesiastical artefacts.

Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 2020

In 1217 William of Rouen, archbishop of Philippi in the kingdom of Thessaloniki, was brutally murdered. This incident is taken as the starting point for an investigation into the realities of Latin rule in the region. The geographical scope includes the lordship and diocese of Philippi and to some extent also various surrounding localities (Christoupolis, Branokastron, Drama, Serres, Zichna, and Melnik under Alexios Sthlabos). The career of William of Rouen is reviewed, along with possible identifications of the mysterious lord of Philippi ('S.'). With respect to Latin-Byzantine relations the Valley of Philippi may serve as an example of the complex situation that developed in many parts of Latin Romania or the post-1204 Byzantine space in general.