Description
Book SynopsisFirst modern critical edition of one of the most important and popular texts on the Crusades to survive. Robert the Monk's history of the First Crusade (1095-99), which was probably completed c. 1110, was in the nature of a medieval "bestseller", proving by far the most popular narrative of the crusade's events; the number of surviving manuscript copies far exceeds those of the many other accounts of the crusades written in the early decades of the twelfth century, when literary retellings of the crusaders' exploits were much in vogue. This volume presents the first critical edition to be published since the 1860s, grounded in a close study of the more than 80 manuscripts of the text that survive in libraries and archives across Europe. In their detailed introduction the editorsexplore the vexed problem of the author's identity, as well as the date of the text, its manuscript transmission, and the reasons for its success, for example among monasteries belonging to the Cistercian order in southern Germany. Damien Kempf is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Liverpool; Marcus Bull is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Trade ReviewA resoundingly successful and important volume. Kempf and Bull have published what should stand as the definitive edition of one of the most popular and important historical texts from the Middle Ages. * CRUSADES *
Makes an important contribution to the revisionist historiography on the First Crusade by uncovering hitherto unknown details about the identity of the author and his narrative methods and approach, and about the history of the transmission and the reception of his manuscript. * ANUARIO DE ESTUDIOS MEDIEVALES *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Historia Iherosolimitana
