The Chronique d'Ernoul and the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre ed. by Peter Edbury, and Massimiliano Gaggero, and; The Chronique d'Ernoul and the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre ed. by Peter Edbury, and Massimiliano Gaggero (review)

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• The Chronique d'Ernoul and the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre ed. by Peter Edbury, and Massimiliano Gaggero, and; The Chronique d'Ernoul and the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre ed. by Peter Edbury, and Massimiliano Gaggero
• James H. Kane

Edbury, Peter, and Massimiliano Gaggero, eds, The Chronique d'Ernoul and the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre, i ( The Medieval Mediterranean, 135/1), Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2023; hardback, pp. ix, 569; R.R.P. €124.00; ISBN 9789004209930. Edbury, Peter, and Massimiliano Gaggero, eds, The Chronique d'Ernoul and the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre, ii ( The Medieval Mediterranean, 135/2), Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2023; hardback, pp. x, 409; R.R.P. €124.00; ISBN 9789004547582.

Few, if any, sources about the Crusades and the Latin East have a textual tradition as complex as that of the various Old French narratives associated with the enormous history of the First Crusade and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem written by Archbishop William of Tyre, who died in obscure circumstances in the period leading up to Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem in 1187. William's Latin text was later rendered into the vernacular, most likely during the reign of King Louis VIII of France (r. 1223–26). Not long afterwards, an anonymous compiler took a separate vernacular narrative of events in the Latin East known to scholars as the Chronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier ('Chronicle of Ernoul and of Bernard the Treasurer'), excised that text's material from the period before 1184 (where William's original account breaks off), and then welded its post-1184 content onto the end of the Old French translation of William of Tyre. The product of this textual fusion underlays a rich series of entangled continuations that extend into the final decades of the thirteenth century and are attested in various forms across dozens of surviving manuscripts from before 1500.

These two volumes, eagerly anticipated by scholars of crusading history ever since the plan to produce them was first signalled fifteen years ago, offer new critical editions of two key texts in the 'Old French William of Tyre' tradition: the aforementioned Chronique d'Ernoul (i), and the so-called Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation, an extensive revision of the post-1184 text that was probably carried out at Acre in the late 1240s (ii). Although both texts have been edited before, by Louis de Mas Latrie (1871) and the editors of the Recueil des historiens des croisades (1859), respectively, the major advances in scholarly understanding of the textual tradition made in the past half-century are more than sufficient to justify the 'need for fresh editions' (i, 5). The majority of those advances have been due to the editors themselves, Peter Edbury and Massimiliano Gaggero, whose patient scholarship on this subject over more than a quarter-century (in Edbury's case) has fundamentally reshaped our knowledge of these texts, their connections, and their [End Page 315] significance. It therefore comes as no surprise that the editions of both texts are superb.

While the editors have opted to select the same base manuscripts as their nineteenth-century predecessors (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS. 11142 for Ernoul; Paris. Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. Fr. 2628 for Colbert-Fontainebleau as far as 1266), the texts they have produced are far superior to those of the earlier editions, not least because they are furnished with a more ample critical apparatus. Though undeniably dense, as acknowledged by the editors themselves (i, 62–63), the meticulous noting of significant variants—supported throughout by relevant historical notes—reflects the editors' diligence in collating the key extant manuscripts and ensures that scholars are now supplied with texts of Ernoul and Colbert-Fontainebleau that adhere even more fully to modern academic conventions. Their edition of Ernoul is also supplemented by four appendices providing editions of unique passages and texts from manuscripts other than the base, which are treated with the same editorial care. In addition, both volumes are furnished with extensive Old French–English glossaries that should enable readers with at least a loose grasp of modern French (and perhaps...