The French Translation of William of Tyre's Historia: the Manuscript Tradition

Abstract

Archbishop William of Tyre wrote his history of the crusades and the Latin East between the late 1160s and 1184, and Robert Huygens’ definitive edition of William’s Latin text, based on a critical analysis of seven manuscripts (plus one fragment), appeared in 1986.2 At some point between the end of the Third Crusade and the early 1230s someone translated the work into French,3 and 51 manuscripts of the translation dating from before 1500 survive in public collections. These are listed below in Appendix 1.4 The French version, usually referred to as L’estoire de Eracles or, more simply, Eracles (thanks to the mention of the seventh-century Byzantine emperor Heraklios in the first sentence), was published in 1844 in the Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens occidentaux, volume 1, where the text occupies the lower half of the same page as William’s Latin text, and again, in 1879-80, by Paulin Paris.5 All modern scholars who have had occasion to refer to the translation have used one or other of these editions. Most of the Eracles manuscripts have continuations which take the narrative well into the thirteenth century, and these continuations were published in 1859 in Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens occidentaux, volume 2. The only sections from the continuations to have been re-edited since then are those covering the years 1184-97 from the Lyon, Bibliotheque de la Ville, ms. 828 ( F72)6 and 1191-97 from the Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, ms. Plu. LXI.10 ( F70) which Ruth Morgan published in 1982.7Historical enquiry into the French William of Tyre has tended to concentrate on two distinct areas: the manuscript illuminations and the continuations. Between them Hugo Buchthal and Jaroslav Folda established that some of the most notable illuminated manuscripts of Eracles were produced in the Latin East in the second half of the thirteenth century, and their discoveries have shed considerable light on the artistic milieu there in the decades before the fall of Acre in 1291.8 The French continuations are a major source for our knowledge of the history of the Latin East after 1184 – there was no historian there writing in Latin of the stature of William of Tyre to describe later events – and so, with the late Ruth Morgan leading the way, it is not surprising that they should have come under critical scrutiny.9 The text of the translation itself, however, has received less attention, even though historians have been aware of significant differences between it and the original Latin version. A group of scholars met at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1987 to investigate the relationship between the Eracles text and William’s Latin chronicle, and their report, composed by John Pryor, began by explaining that they realized from the outset that “the attainment of [their] objectives would, at the very least, be severely hampered by the unsatisfactory nature of the current edition of the Eracles.”10 The discussions on that occasion were fruitful, but, as the participants would doubtless be the first to admit, many problems remain. More recently, Bernard Hamilton, a member of the 1987 group, has published a detailed analysis comparing the Latin and French texts of books 21-23 which cover the reign of Baldwin IV from 1174 until the point early in 1184 at which William ceased writing.11 This is an important article with many pertinent comments, designed to show how, and to what extent, the translator modified what was before him. However, Hamilton’s analysis does require a confidence in the printed text of the translation – in this instance the Paulin Paris edition – which, sadly, is not entirely warranted. Even so, it is much to be hoped that other scholars will repeat this exercise for different periods in William’s narrative.