[62] Authors like Heeren (Versuch einer Entwickelung der Folgen der Kreuzzüge) and Michaud (in the last volume of his Histoire des croisades) fall into the error of assigning all things to the Crusades. Even Prutz, in his Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge, over-estimates the influence of the Crusades as a chapter in the history of civilization. He depreciates unduly the Western civilization of the early middle ages, and exalts the civilization of the Arabs; and starting from these two premises, he concludes that modern civilization is the offspring of the Crusades, which first brought East and West together.
[63] It is difficult to decide how far Arabic models influenced ecclesiastical architecture in the West as a result of the Crusades. Greater freedom of moulding and the use of trefoil and cinquefoil may be, but need not be, explained in this way. The pointed arch owes nothing to the Arabs; it is already used in England in early Norman work. Generally, one may say that Western architecture is independent of the East.
[64] His somewhat legendary treatise, De liberatione civitatum Orientis, was only composed about 1155.
[65] There is also an Inventaire critique of these letters by the comte de Riant (Paris, 1880).
[66] Von Sybel’s view must be modified by that of Kugler, to which a scholar like Hagenmeyer has to some extent given his adhesion (cf. his edition of the Gesta, pp. 62-68). Hagenmeyer inclines to believe in an original author, distinct from Albert the copyist; and he thinks that this original author (whether or no he was present during the Crusade) used the Gesta and also Fulcher, though he had probably also “eigene Notizen und Aufzeichnungen.”
[67] See Pigonneau, Le Cycle de la croisade, &c. (Paris, 1877); and Hagenmeyer, Peter der Eremite (Leipzig, 1879).
[68] On the bibliography of the Second Crusade see Kugler, Studien zur Geschichte des zweiten Kreuzzüges (Stuttgart, 1866).
[69] Of these writers see Archer’s Crusade of Richard I., Appendix (in Nutt’s series of Histories from Contemporary Writers).
[70] The bibliography of the Fourth Crusade is discussed in Klimke, Die Quellen zur Geschichte des vierten Kreuzzüges (Breslau, 1875).