The history of the later Crusades, from the Fifth to the Eighth, enters into the continuations of William of Tyre above mentioned; while the Historia orientalis of Jacques de Vitry, who had taken part in the Fifth Crusade, and died in 1240, embraces the history of events till 1218 (the third book being a later addition). The Secreta fidelium Crucis of Marino Sanudo, a history of the Crusades written by a Venetian noble between 1306 and 1321, is also of value, particularly for the Crusade of Frederick II. The minor authorities for the Fifth Crusade have been collected by Röhricht, in the publications of the Société de l’Orient Latin for 1879 and 1882; the ten valuable letters of Oliver, bishop of Paderborn, and the Historia Damiettina, based on these letters, have also been edited by Röhricht in the Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst (1891). The Sixth Crusade, that of Frederick II., is described in the chronicle of Richard of San Germano, a notary of the emperor, and in other Western authorities, e.g. Roger of Wendover. For the Crusades of St Louis the chief authorities are Joinville’s life of his master (whom he accompanied to Egypt on the Seventh Crusade), and de Nangis’ Gesta Ludovici regis. Several works were written on the capture of Acre in 1291, especially the Excidium urbis Acconensis, a treatise which emerges to throw light, after many years of darkness, on the last hours of the kingdom. The Oriental point of view for the 13th century appears in Jelaleddin’s history of the Ayyubite sultans of Egypt, written towards the end of the 13th century; in Maqrizi’s history of Egypt, written in the middle of the 15th century; and in the compendium of the history of the human race by Abulfeda (†1332); while the omniscient Abulfaragius (whom Rey calls the Eastern St Thomas) wrote, in the latter half of the 13th century, a chronicle of universal history in Syriac, which he also issued, in an Arabic recension, as a Compendious History of the Dynasties.
II. The documents bearing on the history of the Crusades and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem are various. Under the head of charters come the Regesta regni Hierosolymitani, published by Röhricht, Innsbruck, 1893 (with an Additamentum in 1904); the Cartulaire générale des Hospitaliers, by Delaville Leroulx (Paris, 1894 onwards); and the Cartulaire de l’église du St Sépulcre, by de Rozière (Paris, 1849). Under the head of laws come the assizes of the Kingdom, edited by Beugnot in the Recueil des historiens des croisades; and the assizes of Antioch, printed at Venice in 1876. G. Schlumberger has written on the coins and seals of the Latin East in various publications; while Rey has written an Étude sur les monuments de l’architecture militaire (Paris, 1871). The genealogy of the Levant is given in Le Livre des lignages d’outre-mer (published along with the assizes).
Bibliographies.—The best modern account of the original authorities for the Crusades is that of A. Molinier, Les Sources de l’histoire de France, vols. ii. and iii. W. Wattenbach’s Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen gives an account of Albert of Aix (vol. ii., ed. 1894, pp. 170-180) and of Ekkehard of Aura (ibid. pp. 189-198). Von Sybel’s Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzüges contains a full study of the authorities for the First Crusade; while the prefaces to Hagenmeyer’s editions of the Gesta and of Ekkehard are also valuable. Gaston Dodu, in the work mentioned below, begins by a brief account of the original authorities, which is chiefly of value so far as it deals with William of Tyre and the history of the assizes; and H. Prutz has also a short account of some of the historians of the Crusades (Kulturgeschichte, pp. 453-469). Finally reference may be made to the works of Kugler and Klimke above mentioned, and to J. F. Michaud’s Bibliographie des croisades (Paris, 1822).
Modern Writers.—The various works of R. Röhricht present the soundest, if not the brightest, account of the Crusades. There is a Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs (Innsbruck, 1901), a Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem (ibid. 1898) and a Geschichte der Kreuzzüge in Umris (ibid. 1898). For the First Crusade von Sybel’s work and Chalandon’s Alexis Ier Comnène may also be mentioned; for the Fourth A. Luchaire’s volume on Innocent III: La Question d’Orient; while for the whole of the Crusades Norden’s Papstum und Byzanz is of value. B. Kugler’s Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (in Oncken’s series) still remains a suggestive and valuable work; and L. Bréhier’s L’Église et l’orient au moyen âge (Paris, 1907) contains not only an up-to-date account of the Crusades, but also a full and useful bibliography, which should be consulted for fuller information. On points of chronology, and on the relations between the crusaders and their Mahommedan neighbours, W. B. Stevenson’s The Crusaders in the East (Cambridge, 1907) is very valuable. On the constitutional and social history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem Dodu’s Histoire des institutions du royaume latin de Jérusalem is very useful; E. G. Rey’s Les Colonies franques en Syrie contains many interesting details; and Prutz’s Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge contains both an account of the Latin East and an attempt to sketch the effects of the Crusades on the progress of civilization. The works of Gmelin and J. Delaville-Leroulx on the Templars and Hospitallers respectively are worth consulting; while for Eastern affairs the English reader may be referred to G. Lestrange’s Palestine under the Moslem, and to Stanley Lane-Poole’s Life of Saladin and his Mahommedan Dynasties (the latter a valuable work of reference).
(E. Br.)
[1] Fulcher of Chartres, 1, i. For what follows, with regard to the Church’s conversion of guerra into the Holy War, cf. especially the passage—“Procedant contra infideles ad pugnam jam incipi dignam ... qui abusive privatum certamen contra fideles consuescebant distendere quondam.”
[2] Tradition credits a pope still earlier than Gregory VII. with the idea of a crusade. Silvester II. is said to have preached a general expedition for the recovery of Jerusalem; and the same preaching is attributed to Sergius IV. in 1011. But the supposed letter of Silvester is a later forgery; and in 1000 the way of the Christian to Jerusalem was still free and open.
[3] The comte de Riant impugned the authenticity of Alexius’ letter to the count of Flanders. It is very probable that the versions of this letter which we possess, and which are to be found only in later writings like Guibert de Nogent, are apocryphal; Alexius can hardly have held out the bait of the beauty of Greek women, or have written that he preferred to fall under the yoke of the Latins rather than that of the Turks. But it is also probable that these apocryphal versions are based on a genuine original.
[4] Ekkehard, Chronica, p. 213.