The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen: A History of the Normans on the First Crusade (review)

Ralph of Caen's biography of Tancred is an important source for the First Crusade. Although not himself a participant, Ralph went to Syria, probably in 1108, after serving in Bohemond of Taranto's household on the abortive crusade of 1107. He knew many of those who had been on the First Crusade, including Bohemond and Arnulf of Chocques, who had taught him back in Normandy. In Syria he served in Tancred's household and met the survivors who were now settled there. His account contains details which are not to be found elsewhere. He described what must have been Tancred's personal explanation of his motives for joining the crusade and he provides evidence for a continuing debate among survivors about the division of the army on the march from Nicaea. His treatment of Bohemond's reasons for questioning the authenticity of the relic of the Holy Lance—that the visionary Peter Bartholomew, who was behind its discovery, was of low status, that its hiding place was improbable, and that historical sources provided no evidence for its transference to Antioch—is a classic expression of contemporary opinions on the value or otherwise of testimony.

Until now the only translation available has been a nineteenth-century one into French by the great polymath and politician François Guizot, which is hard to find and is anyway based on an early edition. The introduction to this new version is informative and sensible, although the translators' statement that they have followed the principle of sensus pro sensu, rather than verbum pro verbo, is open to criticism, given the importance of language to understanding. I would certainly have preferred a translation that was as literal as possible. Ralph of Caen's Latin is not easy. A typical early product of the so-called "Twelfth-Century Renaissance," he was inclined to show off his literary style in ways which do not always make for clarity and comprehension is not helped by his practice of breaking every now and then into verse. It was courageous of the translators to take on the task of rendering him into English, but it has to be said that they have not always succeeded. A brief check has revealed mistranslations in chapter 21, where one sentence simply does not convey the meaning of the Latin, and chapter 135, where "Papae" cannot mean "Pope" but the interjection "How strange!", and carelessness, as in the inclusion in the text of chapter 92 of a phrase which is in a historical note to the Latin edition they used and in the substitution of a singular for a plural (making nonsense of the passage) in chapter 112.

University teachers and students will welcome this translation, but it is really no substitute for struggling with the Latin.