William of Tyre

William of Tyre, historian, was probably born about 1137, but at any rate was appointed archdeacon of Tyre in 1167, and archbishop of Tyre in 1175. He was tutor to Baldwin, son of king Amalric, and was one of the six bishops who represented the Latin Church of the East at the Lateran Council (1179), and on the return journey spent some months with the Emperor Manuel at Constantinople. His history breaks off abruptly about the end of 1183. William of Tyre's Historia Rerum in Partibus Transmarinis Gestarum worthily fills up the space between the periods treated by Fulcher of Chartres and Ernoul, that is from 1127 to 1184. There is a 13th-century French translation, edited by P. Paris (2 vols. 1879-80), often styled Roman d'Eracle, simply because the name of Heraclius occurs in the first sentence. Another work was the Historia de Orientalibus Principibus, undertaken at the request of Amalric. As a historian William of Tyre is painstaking, learned, unprejudiced, with the gift moreover of graphic delineation.