Guillaume de Tyr

Guillaume de Tyr (towards 1128 † 1186) was archbishop of Tyr and historian of the Croisade S with the Moyen-âge.

Guillaume was born with Jerusalem about 1128 among Latin from the East from the second generation. Child, it was educated in Jerusalem, but adult, it could finish his studies with Paris, then more the coed big city of the Occident, or with Bologna.

After its Holy Land return, in 1163 he became the principal clerk of the cathedral of Tyr, and in 1167 became archdeacon. In 1168, it carried out a diplomatic mission for the king Amaury Ier of Jerusalem near the Byzantine emperor Manuel Ier Comnène, and in 1169 it is sent to Rome. On its return, it is named tutor of Baudouin, the son and the heir to Amaury, which became king in 1173 under the name of Baudouin IV. In 1174 Baudouin did it chancellor of Jerusalem, while in 1175 Guillaume became archbishop of Tyr, thus occupying of the functions among most important within the Church and of the State.

In 1179 it took part in the ecumenical IIIe council of Lateran and was an ambassador near the emperor Manuel Ist Income out of Holy Land in 1180, it was regarded as the best candidate to be patriarch of Jerusalem, but the political operations drew aside it and its rival Héraclius was selected. He even seems that Héraclius excommunicated it in 1183, and its influence at the court ceased with the advent of Baudouin V in 1185.

Guillaume declared that he wrote a report of the Council of Lateran, and as of a Historia or Gesta orientalium principum treating history of the Holy Land of the time Mahomet until 1184 and as Jacques of Vitry used for its Historia Orientalis . Unfortunately, none of this two work arrived to us.

Its greater work is a Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum in twenty three books, but unfinished. It starts with the conquest of the Syria with Omar, but the majority of the events which it treats relate to the First crusade. Although it used old and unknown sources, its work is often regarded as a first hand work. It widely was translated and diffused in Europe after the death of Guillaume; its French title is Histoire of Overseas (“Outremer” being the generic name given to the Latin States of the East created after the First crusade).

Guillaume died in Europe at the time of his voyage to justify in front of the pope in October 1186

This history is downloadable on the site of BNF Gallica

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