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[ It is singular enough, that Raymond of St. Giles, a second character in the genuine history of the crusades, should shine as the first of heroes in the writings of the Greeks (Anna Comnen. Alexiad, l. x xi.) and the Arabians, (Longueruana, p. 129.)]
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[ Omnes de Burgundia, et Alvernia, et Vasconia, et Gothi, (of Languedoc,) provinciales appellabantur, caeteri vero Francigenae et hoc in exercitu; inter hostes autem Franci dicebantur. Raymond des Agiles, p. 144.]
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[ The town of his birth, or first appanage, was consecrated to St Aegidius, whose name, as early as the first crusade, was corrupted by the French into St. Gilles, or St. Giles. It is situate in the Iowen Languedoc, between Nismes and the Rhone, and still boasts a collegiate church of the foundation of Raymond, (Melanges tires d’une Grande Bibliotheque, tom. xxxvii. p 51.)]
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[ The mother of Tancred was Emma, sister of the great Robert Guiscard; his father, the Marquis Odo the Good. It is singular enough, that the family and country of so illustrious a person should be unknown; but Muratori reasonably conjectures that he was an Italian, and perhaps of the race of the marquises of Montferrat in Piedmont, (Script. tom. v. p. 281, 282.)]
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[ To gratify the childish vanity of the house of Este. Tasso has inserted in his poem, and in the first crusade, a fabulous hero, the brave and amorous Rinaldo, (x. 75, xvii. 66-94.) He might borrow his name from a Rinaldo, with the Aquila bianca Estense, who vanquished, as the standard-bearer of the Roman church, the emperor Frederic I., (Storia Imperiale di Ricobaldo, in Muratori Script. Ital. tom. ix. p. 360. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iii. 30.) But, 1. The distance of sixty years between the youth of the two Rinaldos destroys their identity. 2. The Storia Imperiale is a forgery of the Conte Boyardo, at the end of the xvth century, (Muratori, p. 281-289.) 3. This Rinaldo, and his exploits, are not less chimerical than the hero of Tasso, (Muratori, Antichita Estense, tom. i. p. 350.)]