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Walters Ms. W.137, William of Tyre's Histoire d'Outre MerBrowse images (Browse images in a new window) | TEI in XML format
Manuscript
William of Tyre's Histoire d'Outre Mer
Text title
Histoire d'Outre Mer
Author
Authority name: William, of Tyre, Archbishop of Tyre, approximately 1130-approximately 1190
Known as: William II of Tyre
Abstract
This manuscript, completed in the later part of the thirteenth century, contains William of Tyre's Estoire d'Eracles (to 1229), Les Faits des Romains (continuation, Tiberius to Julian), and a letter of Prester John. While the origin of the manuscript is debatable between Acre and Paris, Jaroslav Folda suggests a strong connection with Epinal 45, a manuscript known to have been created in Paris during this same time. Versions of William of Tyre's work were particularly popular in France during the latter part of the thirteenth century. The volume of William de Tyre's history of the Crusades housed at the Walters Art Museum features eighteen historiated initials, completed by four different artists' hands, of varying competence. What sets this particular manuscript apart from its contemporaries is the two unusual appended texts and its selective pictorial style.
Date
Late 13th century CE
Origin
North France (Paris?)
Language:
The primary language in this manuscript is French, Old (842-ca.1400).
Support material
Parchment
Medium- to heavy-weight parchment; unevenly and at times poorly finished, with color and texture ranging widely; many mended and unmended holes, some large and within textblock (e.g. see fol. 189); many missing corners; candle wax spilled on pages throughout
Extent
Foliation: i+362+i
Original foliation in red Roman numerals, upper left corners, versos; nineteenth-century pencil foliation on upper right corners, rectos, now almost completely erased; modern pencil foliation, upper right corners, rectos (used here)
Collation
Formula: Quires 1-6: 12 (fols. 1-72); Quire 7: 8 (fols. 73-80); Quires 8-13: 12 (fols. 81-152); Quire 14: 8 (fols. 153-160); Quires 15-30: 12 (fols. 161-352); Quire 31: 4 (fols. 353-356); Quire 32: 6, composed of six singletons stitched together (fols. 357-362)
Catchwords: Occasionally visible lower right of last verso in quire
Signatures: Signatures rarely visible, give upper-case letter and roman numeral (e.g. fols. 153-157, where "NI"-"NV" is visible in lead); quire numbers at times visible in form of dark brown ink Roman numerals, middle of lower margins, last versos; modern pencil quire numbers in Arabic numerals lower left corners first rectos
Comments:
Dimensions
24.5 cm wide by 34.1 cm high
Written surface
18.0 cm wide by 26.0 cm high
Layout
Contents:
fols. 1r - 362v:Decoration:
fol. 1r:
fol. 15r:
fol. 29r:
fol. 33r:
fol. 62r:
fol. 137r:
fol. 145r:
fol. 157v:
Note: this has usually been described as a scene of men playing chess, but close examination reveals dice on the board rather than chess pieces. This may be a strange conflation of two traditions associated with this story, in which they are usually described as playing dice, but are sometimes depicted playing chess.
fol. 171v:
fol. 180v:
fol. 203v:
fol. 222r:
fol. 229v:
fol. 235r:
fol. 252r:
fol. 265v:
fol. 329r:
fol. 357r:
Binding
The binding is not original.
Binding by Léon Gruel, Paris, early twentieth century; red velvet, resewn on six tawed straps; in eighteenth or early nineteenth century, edges of pages speckled with orange and grey, and paper tabs added; leather tabs added late nineteenth or early twentieth century; Gruel's original telescopic book box, stamped in gold with his name, replaced by Walters conservation department in the second half of the twentieth century
Provenance
Produced in northern France, possibly Paris, in the late thirteenth century; early ownership inscription erased, fol. 362r
Several later inscriptions survive on fol. 362v in various states of legibility; upper left: fifteenth-century inscription reads "Cest li Roman de Goudeffroy de bullion Explicit"; to right of this inscription (somewhat effaced) in a different hand "Cest ly Roman godefroy de bullon que...p[our] xlvii m auril"; below both is drawn rectangular box which originally contained inscription (now erased); in lower left corner is inscribed ".xxx. l[ivres]"
Gordon of Buthlaw, Great Britain, mid-nineteenth century
Bertram, Fourth Earl of Ashburnham, London, 1861, no. CLIV in his collection
Léon Gruel, Paris, purchased at Sotheby's, London, March 16, 1903, lot 689; Gruel and Engelmann bookplate on front pastedown, inscribed "No 138"
Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1903, by purchase from Gruel
Acquisition
Walters Art Museum, 1931, by Henry Walters' bequest
Bibliography
Jubb, Margaret A. "The Ordene de Chevalerie and the Old French Translation of William of Tyre: The Relationship of Text to Context" (with an edition of OC), Carte Romanze 4/2 (2016): 9-36.
Riant, Paul. "Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits de l'Eracles." Archives de l'Orient Latin 1 (1880-1881): 247-256; p. 250, no. 42.
De Ricci, S., and W. J. Wilson. Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Vol. 1. New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1935; p. 850, cat. no. 524.
Woledge, Brian, and H. P. Clive. Répertoire des plus anciens textes en prose français depuis 842 jusqu'aux première années du XIIIe siècle. Société de Publications Romanes et Françaises, 79. Geneva: Libraire Droz Geneve, 1964; pp. 60-61.
Folda, Jaroslav. "Manuscripts of the 'History of Outremer' by William of Tyre: A Handlist." Scriptorium 27 (1973): 90-95; 93.
Morgan, Margaret R. The Chronicle of Ernoul and the Continuations of William of Tyre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973; p. 38.
Folda, Jaroslav. Crusader Manuscript Illumination at Saint-Jean d'Arce, 1275-1291. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976; pp. 131, 146, 148-151, 208-211, figs. 273-281.
Greenhalgh, Michael. Donatello and His Sources. NY: Holmes and Meier, 1982; p. 185.
Randall, Lilian M.C. "From Cîteaux Onwards: Cistercian-Related Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery." Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture 3 (1987): 111-136; p. 130, no. 6.
Edbury, Peter W., and John G. Rowe. William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; cover illus., p. 192.
Randall, Lilian M. C. Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Walters Art Gallery. Vol. 1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989; pp. 123-127, cat. no. 50.
Nicolle, David. Arms and Armour of the Crusading Era, 1050-1350: Western Europe and the Crusader States. Bamsley, Yorkshire: Greenhill Books, 1999; p. 39, cat. no. 59.
Camille, Michael. El Ãdolo gótico: IdeologÃa y creacÃon de imágenes en el arte medieval. Madrid: Ediciones AKAL, 2000; pp. 153-154, fig. 76 (ref. as MS 10.137).
Higgs Strickland, Debra. Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003; pp. 166-168 (fig. 78).
Vale, Juliet. "Image and Identity in the Prehistoric Order of the Garter." In St George's Chapel, Windsor, in the Fourteenth Century. Edited by Nigel Saul, 35-50. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2005; p. 36.
Edbury, Peter W. "The French Translation of William of Tyre's Historia: The Manuscript Tradition." Crusades 6 (2007): 69-106; pp. 72, 80, 81, 89, 95, 98 (ref. as F31).
Edbury, Peter W. "The Old French William of Tyre and the Origins of the Templars." In Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar. Edited by Norman Housely. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007; 151-164; p. 162.
Edbury, Peter W. "The Old French William of Tyre, the Templars, and the Assassin Envoy." In The Hospitallers, Mediterranean and Europe: Festschrift for Anthony Luttrell. Edited by Karl Borchardt, Nikolas Jaspert, and Helen J. Nicholson, 25-38. Burlington: Ashgate, 2007; pp. 33-34, 37 (ref. as f31).
Rinoldi, Paolo. "La tradizione dell'Estoire d'Eracles in Italia. Note su un volgarizzamento fiorentino." In Studi su volgarizzamenti italiani due-trecenteschi. Edited by Paolo Rinoldi and Gabriella Ronchi, 65-97. Rome: Viella, 2009; p. 68.
Folda, Jaroslav. "Commemorating the Fall of Jerusalem: Remembering the First Crusade in Text, Liturgy, and Image." In Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity. Edited by Nicholas Paul and Suzanne Yeager, 125-145. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012; pp. 140 (fig. 5.4), 144 (n. 34), 145 (n. 35).
Luchitskaya, Svetlana I. "Pictorial Sources, Coronation Ritual, and Daily Life." In Ritual, Images, and Daily Life: The Medieval Perspective. Edited by Gerhard Jaritz. Münster: Verlag Frenostr, 2012; pp. 62, 66.
Contributors
Principal cataloger: Randall, Lilian M.C.
Cataloger: Herbert, Lynley
Editor: Herbert, Lynley
Copy editor: Dibble, Charles
Conservators: Owen, Linda; Quandt, Abigail
Contributors: Brown, Emily; Emery, Doug; Herbold, Rebekah; Noel, William; Schuele, Allyson; Tabritha, Ariel; Toth, Michael B.; Wiegand, Kimber
Publisher
The Walters Art Museum
License
Licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Access Rights, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode. It is requested that copies of any published articles based on the information in this data set be sent to the curator of manuscripts, The Walters Art Museum, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore MD 21201.
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