The Historia Orientalis of Jacques de Vitry: Visual and Written Commentaries as Evidence of a Text's Audience, Reception, and Utilization

During the Fifth Crusade, James of Vitry and Oliver of Paderborn provided Honorius III and their collaborators in organizing the crusade in Europe with information on its progress while simultaneously writing histories of the Holy Land, former crusades, and the current campaign. Their project had precedents: Innocent III had requested a briefing from Haymarus, patriarch of Jerusalem, on the situation in the East and by 1213 had attempted to elicit further suggestions regarding the proposed work of the Fourth Lateran Council: reform and crusade. ² Writing only a few years after Lateran IV (1215), James of Vitry intended to divide his Historia Hierosolimitana into three books. The first, the Historia Occidentalis or "History of the West" outlined what he hoped the Fourth Lateran Council's reform program would achieve in Europe. ³ Its mirror image, the Historia Orientalis or "History of the East" treated past and present circumstances in the Holy Land and surrounding regions. This second book's impressive popularity was ensured by its descriptions of the East's geography, holy sites, peoples, and natural wonders, teamed with a history of the crusades and an appeal for the reform of its inhabitants. It survives in over one hundred manuscripts and was translated into French and Spanish. ⁴ James appears to have never written a proposed third book chronicling the triumph of the Fifth Crusade and Lateran IV, although copyists soon cobbled together material from Haymarus's report and the history of James's collaborator, Oliver of Paderborn, to form a work which survives in more copies than either of Oliver's or James's histories. ⁵

Of the two books which can be attributed with certainty to James of Vitry, the eastern history proved far more popular than the western history. Some of the earliest copies can be traced to St. Martin's in Tournai, Clairvaux, Cologne, Florence, and Northern France. ⁶ In fact, James's and Oliver's histories seem to have been used as propaganda for the crusade of Frederick II. This led to their speedy dissemination and to the quick substitution of material for the missing third book, which was to contain the most recent information on the intended goals of Frederick II's projected expedition: the Holy Land and Egypt. ⁷ Evidence for the existence of other early copies in France and Flanders-Brabant and clues to the origin of an anonymously compiled third book come from religious houses with ties to James, Oliver, or other returning crusaders. James of Vitry's close links to Trois-Fontaines ⁸ and Neufmoustier ⁹ may have influenced their chroniclers' decision to include materials on recent crusades, the East, and its peoples in reaction to the disastrous denouement of the Damiettan campaign and Frederick II's successful crusade. They creatively combined information from James's newsletters and eastern history with Oliver's Historia Damiatina and Historia Regnum, Haymarus's brief, and William of Tyre's history of the Latin Kingdom. ¹⁰ Roger Wendover and his continuator, Matthew Paris, also dipped into Oliver's history and a copy of James's eastern history brought back in 1231 by Peter des Roches, one of two leaders of the English participants in Frederick II's crusade. ¹¹

The close succession of crusades in the thirteenth century made James's descriptions of potential allies and various religions in the East invaluable, ensuring that his eastern history remained in circulation. One spurt of late-thirteenth century copies accompanied Gregory X's crusading preparations, including his call for proposals for the Second Council of Lyons (1274), which was to treat of reform, the crusade, and the reunion of the Latin and Greek churches. ¹² Humbert of Romans urged reformers, crusade planners, and preachers to consult James's history, as both he and Guibert of Tournai...