Gesta Tancredi In Expeditione Hierosolymitana

the Actions of Prince Tancrède during the forwarding of Jerusalem ( Gesta Tancredi in Expeditione Hierosolymitana in Latin) of Raoul of Caen, tells the history of the Norman knight Tancrède de Hauteville, grandson of Robert Guiscard and nephew of Bohémond de Tarente, which was distinguished at the time of the First crusade (1095 - 1099). It recalls its course since the departure of the Normands of Sicily in November 1096 of the area of Apulie in Italy of the South (more precisely of the port of Bari), to the seat of the town of Apamée in Syria in 1105, without revealing the exit of this battle.

As of the foreword, the author specifies that it was determined to undertake his work only with dead of Tancrède (in 1112). It is necessary thus any to think that the author at least could know the continuation of the events, if it is not to have also put it in writing. We thus have only part of work, the end being regarded so far as lost. The dates of drafting of work are they also approximate because, started after 1112, the epic had to be finished before 1118, date of died of the Arnoul patriarch to which this work is dedicated and which is quoted in the foreword as a corrector.

The manuscript which arrived to us single, is discovered in 1716 by Don Martenne in the abbey of Gemblours in Normandy. It is also him which ensured the first edition of it the year according to, in its Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum , a posteriori of the Gesta Dei Per Francos of Bongars which is unaware of this source. A few years after, Muratori gives of it a more exact edition in its Scriptores Rerum Italicarum , and it is this text which was used as a basis for the translation of François Guizot which always makes authority today. The original manuscript as for him is preserved at the National library of France.

The epic of Raoul of Caen appears, within sight of the constant plays of alternation between a Latin prose of most traditional and parts in worms length unequal, like a work semi-history, semi-poetic. Its most original character more intrigant but also is undoubtedly its whole partiality in favor of the Normands of Sicily, of Bohémond and of course of Tancrède, some qualifying even the epic of Panégyrique. Nevertheless the quality of the details delivered by Raoul of Caen and the veracity of some of its descriptions based on accounts of witnesses (as it was often the case with the Moyen-âge since Bède Worthy the) make some, in spite of certain gaps and antitheses, a considerable source for the history of the First crusade.

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