Historia 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 Syria 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.
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." 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
rhetorical 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: • confusion between
reflexive and
possessive pronouns; • confusion over the use of the
accusative and
ablative cases, especially after the
preposition in; • collapsed
diphthongs (i.e. the Latin diphthongs
ae and
oe are spelled simply
e); • the
dative "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 "
sh", a sound which Latin lacks, for example in the name
Shawar which he spells "Ssauar".
Literary themes and biases from the group of heroes surrounding the memorial to
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in the
Hofkirche, Innsbruck. By William's time, Godfrey was seen as the heroic leader of the First Crusade, and his strength and virtue had become legendary.|alt=A statue of a knight with a long beard. He is wearing a crown of thorns and elaborate armour. He has a sword in his left hand, and a shield rests against his right leg. Despite his quotations from Christian authors and from the
Bible, 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.
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 Bazoches,
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.
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
Ernoul 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 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.
Other 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
Muhammad 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. ==Modern assessment==