A trip to the library...

Richard's historians at the Boston Public Library

Richard’s history is documented by multiple sources, especially as it relates to his participation in the third Crusade. Key primary sources include L'Estoire de la Guerre Sainte (The History of the Holy War) of Ambroise, Richard de Templo’s Itinerary of Richard I and Others to the Holy Land , The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes, and the Chronicles of Roger of Hoveden. One will often find Richard de Templo’s Itinerary often ascribed to Geoffrey Vinsauf, whose poetry is contained in this work, but today’s scholarly view is that de Templo is the author of the work.)

It is for these first three that I have come to the Boston Public Library. Translations of these exist, but not usually in your local bookstore. :) Each of them are available from Amazon (often quite expensively). But it just does not feel like research to order them from Amazon. Consulting the BPL website, I discover that they have copies, one of them dating from 1903. More interestingly, they are listed as “in-library use only”. Hm. What does that mean? I’m off to the library. I love old books.

The BPL is a magnificent old building in the heart of Back Bay Boston. Appropriately, on the stairs I am greeted by Lions. Heading up the stairs, I visit the information booth and ask about “in library use only”. “Go through those doors, down two rooms, and ask there. I get there and inquire again. '“Fill out this form with the call number, then go to the next room”. Wow, call numbers. It’s 1970 again. :)

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I do so, and in the next room, they take the card, and my library card #, and my Hawaii driver’s license. I hold my breath - I have a sort of “half Library Card” - because I am Cambridge resident, not Boston, my library card really only entitles me to digital (not physical) check outs. But after some mumbling, the librarian says, “OK, your books will be ready in about 15 minutes, come back here.” Phew! And hands me a physical library card, with all privileges, with a new number. Jackpot.

After 15 minutes, I go back and my books are ready.

The librarian looks at me sternly, and says, “These books cannot leave the library. They must be back here before closing time.” I feel like I am Tom Hanks in the Vatican Library in Angels & Demons. All I am missing are the white cotton gloves.

OK, to work.

Each of the histories have their own flavor, length, and probable reliability. Ambroise, the author of the perhaps the best known of the histories, was a jongleur, a minstrel, apparently in Richard’s service, and his history is recorded in French verse; think The Iliad but shorter. I like to imagine him singing it around the campfire or at court. As it happens, the only surviving copy of Ambroise is in the Vatican Library :).

The most reliable is generally thought to be Richard de Templos’ (are all these guys named Richard?). He also appears to have been in Richard’s service and present in person. The shortest is Richard of Devizes’, a Benedictine monk. And, from my point of view, this last Richard is a piece of work. Let’s start here: the opening paragraph:

Now in the year of our Lord's incarnation 1189, Richard, the son of king Henry II. by Eleanor, brother or Henry III., was consecrated king of the English by Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, at Westminster, on the third of the nones of September (3 Sept.). On the very day of the coronation, about that solemn hour, in which the Son was immolated to the Father, a sacrifice of the Jews to their father the devil was commenced in the city of London, and so long was the duration of this famous mystery, that the holocaust could scarcely be accomplished the ensuing day. The other cities and towns of the kingdom emulated the faith of the Londoners, and with a like devotion despatched their bloodsuckers with blood to hell.

In case you are new to the medieval era, it was often ugly. Sometimes difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys, as they say. Some accounts blame Richard for this horrific event; Roger of Howden rather says that Richard punished those responsible.

Or consider more from Devizes:

The king readily disburthened all, whose money was a burthen to them (HAHAHA), such powers and possessions as they chose being given to anybody at pleasure; wherewith also on a time an old acquaintance in the company joking him, he broke off with this evasion, "I would sell London if I could find a chapman."

From this we learn that Richard of Devizes had a mean sense of humor, and that Richard was singlemindedly raising funds nearly as soon as he was crowned. Of Richard it was famously said “he was a bad son, a bad husband, and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier". We might eventually acquit Richard of the worst of these charges, but it was clear throughout his life that governing a peaceful kingdom from his throne was not how he saw his life going, and that he saw England as much as a source of funds and title as anything else.

From Richard of Devizes we learn the components of the dowry of Richard’s sister Joanna (wife of King William of Sicily), whose imprisonment (and dowry value!) will soon lead Richard to occupy the capital of Sicily until it and she are freed. This is one of the details I’ve come to research:

..a golden seat and the whole legacy which King William had bequeathed to his father, King Henry, namely, a golden table of twelve feet in length, a silk tent, a hundred of the best galleys with all their necessaries for two years, sixty thousand silinas of wheat, sixty thousand of barley, sixty thousand of wine, four and twenty golden cups, and four and twenty golden dishes.

Also from Devizes, amusingly, from a speech of Richard’s:

Let two thousand bold knights…be made ready

The “bold knights” phrase, an annotation notes, should have been literally translated as “men who have not their hearts in their boots”.

A note on Richard’s banner, to be returned to in a later post:

The king of England proceeds in arms; the terrible standard of the dragon is borne in front unfurled.

Lastly, Richard of Devizes, the master of medieval snark, on Berengaria, Richard’s fiancee, and ending with a rather mysterious warning:

Eleanor....still indefatigable for every undertaking, whose power was the admiration of her age, having taken with her the daughter of the king of the Navarrese, a maid more accomplished than beautiful, followed the king her son, and having overtaken him still abiding in Sicily, she came to Pisa, a city full of every good, and convenient for her reception, there to await the king's pleasure, together with the king of Navarre's ambassadors and the damsel. Many knew, what I wish that none of us had known. The same queen, in the time of her former husband, went to Jerusalem. Let none speak more thereof; I also know well. Be silent.

I’m at a bit of a loss to explain the last few sentences… [Update March 2023: This is likely a reference to Eleanor’s rumored infidelity to Louis, with Raymond of Antioch, her uncle no less, as reported by William of Tyre.]

Next, we’ll visit with de Templo, and Roger of Hoveden, and make our first encounter with that mythical blade, Excalibur.

(Episode 3 here)