Ambroise
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "other uses". Ambroise, sometimes Ambroise of Normandy,[1] (flourished c. Template:TrimScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".) was a Norman poet and chronicler of the Third Crusade, author of a work called Script error: No such module "Lang"., which describes in rhyming Old French verse the adventures of Script error: No such module "Lang". as a crusader.[2]
Life
The credit for detecting its value belongs to Gaston Paris, although his edition (1897) was partially anticipated by the editors of the Script error: No such module "Lang"., who published some selections in the twenty-seventh volume of their Scriptores (1885). Ambroise followed Richard I as a noncombatant, and not improbably as a court-minstrel. He speaks as an eyewitness of the king's doings at Messina, in Cyprus, at the siege of Acre, and in the abortive campaign which followed the capture of that city. His work is considered one of the only reliable primary sources on the siege of Cyprus.[2]
Commentary on his work
Ambroise is surprisingly accurate in his chronology; though he did not complete his work before 1195, it is evidently founded upon notes which he had taken in the course of his pilgrimage. He shows no greater political insight than we should expect from his position; but relates what he had seen and heard with a naïve vivacity which compels attention. He is by no means an impartial source: he is prejudiced against the Saracens, against the French, and against all the rivals or enemies of his master, including the Polein party which supported Conrad of Montferrat against Guy of Lusignan. He is rather to be treated as a biographer than as a historian of the Crusade in its broader aspects. Nonetheless, he is an interesting primary source for the events of the years 1190–1192 in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.[2]
Books 2–6 of the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, a Latin prose narrative of the same events apparently compiled by Richard, a canon of Holy Trinity, London, are closely related to Ambroise's poem. They were formerly sometimes regarded as the first-hand narrative on which Ambroise based his work, but that can no longer be maintained.[2]
History of the poem
The poem is known to us only through one Vatican manuscript, and long escaped the notice of historians.[2]
Published edition
- Ambroise, L´Estoire de la guerre sainte. Paris, 1897: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6517331f.r
- Ambroise, Itinerarium regis Ricardi. London, 1920: https://archive.org/details/itinerariumregis00richuoft
- Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, translated by Marianne Ailes, Boydell Press, 2003.
See also
Notes
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- ↑ This form appeared first in Template:Emc1
- ↑ a b c d e One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Script error: No such module "template wrapper".
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- Pages with script errors
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- Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
- 12th-century deaths
- Anglo-Norman literature
- Medieval writers about the Crusades
- Year of birth unknown
- 12th-century French poets
- Christians of the Third Crusade
- Year of death unknown