William of Tyre Characterization

Edbury and Rowe (1991:26-27, 30-31) characterized Historia as follows:

In so large a work, composed over the course of a number of years, it comes as no surprise to find on close examination flaws and unevenness. Chronology is sometimes confused and dates are given wrongly; thus historians have long recognized that many of the accession dates William supplied for the kings of Jerusalem and their regnal years are inaccurate. In places the connection between events described is inadequately explained.

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William clearly subjected the work to revisions, some of which proved more effective than others, but his insertions, especially the documentation relating to the ecclesiastical province of Tyre in Book xiv, are sometimes clumsy. What is remarkable - and this is testimony to his mastery of the craft of historical writing - is that these blemishes and inconsistencies are not far more numerous.

The fact that there are blemishes and inconsistencies preserved in the text as it has come down to us allows us to detect something of how William set about writing and how, over the years, his own vision as a historian developed. But only to a limited extent. What they do not do is give much indication of how rapidly his composition of the Historia progressed or when precisely he wrote a particular passage. In the years 1181-2 he introduced fresh material in the course of his revisions. The problem, however, remains that, whereas a number of the alterations and insertions made at that time can be identified with some degree of confidence, it is by no means always clear where they begin and the original drafting ends, and so the task of dating the surrounding material is made all the more difficult. It is therefore hazardous to attempt to link William's understanding of past events with specific incidents in his own day which could have had a bearing on his writing.

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The Historia lerosolymitana is thus complete in the sense that when William laid down his pen there was nothing more he then wished to record, incomplete in the sense that he intended to go on writing. But his achievement is impressive, and the work as it stands possesses a clear organizational scheme. The first eight books deal with the history of the First Crusade. Thereafter the work is divided by reign: each king of Jerusalem being allotted two books except the uncrowned Godfrey of Bouillon, who is given one; Baldwin III, whose twenty-year reign (1143-63) was the longest of any of the twelfth-century kings, who is given three; and Baldwin IV, who is given two plus what little there is of Book xxm. Book xi covers the longest span, fourteen years; most of the others cover between five and eight years. Taken as a whole, the narrative of the years 1099-1184 is remarkably evenly spaced. The account of the period from 1165, when William himself was living in the East, is not given in appreciably greater detail - the years 1167 and 1168 are the exception - nor is it disproportionately expansive. There is unevenness; there are places where William seems to be spinning out inadequate information; there are periods for which his narrative is unaccountably thin; there are clumsily executed insertions; but there is much that stands in its own right as polished twelfth century historical writing at its best.