The Old French William of Tyre in Outremer
Philip Handyside
phandysi@stetson.edu
Archbishop William of Tyre’s Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum
(Historia) is a major source for knowledge of the Latin East during the 12th Century.
However, his work was not widely read and few Latin manuscripts survive. William’s work,
however, would become very popular after it was translated into French, referred to as
L’Estoire de Eracles (Eracles). While the translation was clearly made in the West, it soon
made it back to William’s homeland with a group of the surviving manuscripts being copied
in the East. The proposed paper will comprise an examination of these manuscripts,
identifying key features of the manuscript redaction found in the Latin East and how the
reintroduction of these manuscripts to the West affected the textual development of the
Eracles.
Of the extant manuscripts, thirteen can be shown to have either been produced in the
Latin East, likely Acre, or were copied from Eastern exemplars. Of the six chapters that I
have edited for all of the Eracles manuscripts, these thirteen manuscripts share a number of
key distinctive readings. These manuscripts can also be divided into two further subgroups
that may indicate the presence of multiple centres of manuscript production in the Latin East.
The key readings for each group will be analysed. A fourteenth manuscript has been
tentatively given an Eastern provenance, possibly Antioch, by Jaroslav Folda. The
provenance of this manuscript will also be discussed and its place within the manuscript
tradition.