The 'Templar of Tyre'

Part III of the 'Deeds of the Cypriots'

Paul F. Crawford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351881326
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The so-called 'Templar of Tyre' is the third and longest section of an important 14th-century chronicle known as the Gestes des Chiprois. Written by a Cypriot knight who served the Templar Master William of Beaujeu as an Arabic translator and a member of his immediate retinue, the 'Templar of Tyre' provides precious contemporary insights, often drawn from the author's personal experience, into events beginning in the early 1230s and ending in 1309 in the East and 1314 in the West. Notably, it covers the last days of the mainland Crusader states and the fall of Acre in 1291 (providing our only eyewitness chronicle of this disaster), as well as providing information on the period following 1291. The author also reports various events in the West, including the wars of the Hohenstaufen in Italy, the rise and fall of Simon de Montfort in England, the trial and dissolution of the Templars in France, and the interminable wars of Genoa and Venice across the Mediterranean. This is the first complete translation of the 'Templar of Tyre' into English.

Book Three §§237–702 of the Gestes des Chiprois: the ‘Templar of Tyre’

237 Now that you have heard all about the schemes which were played out on this side of the sea in Syria and in Cyprus,¹ relating solely to the emperor² and the Cypriots, I want to tell you about a number of other things which occurred in Syria, in Cyprus, and in some places in the lands beyond the sea³ – things which are worthy of note.

238 While this war was going on between the Cypriots and the emperor’s men, as you have heard, the emperor heard that the Genoese had aided the Cypriots against his men with all their might. Moreover, they had themselves resisted him when he was in Acre, giving their support to the lord of Beirut.⁴ Because of this, the emperor bore great ill-will towards the Genoese and gave orders to all the places under his lordship that the Genoese were not to remain there, on pain of their heads, until he should tell them otherwise.⁵ He prohibited the exportation of wheat or any other kind of food from his lands into Genoa, under heavy penalty, and because of this wheat became so expensive in Genoa that a measure⁶ of wheat was valued at 100 sous of their money,⁷ for the city of Genoa was able to provide for all its needs except for wheat.

239 Meanwhile, Pope Celestine IV of Milan had commanded several prelates to come to him in Rome.¹ Because these prelates did not dare to go by way of imperial lands or through Pisa, they came to Genoa, where they equipped several galleys for the trip to Rome. When the emperor heard that these prelates would be crossing in the galleys from Genoa, he equipped forty galleys in Pisa, and they went after the Genoese galleys and their prelates. (The emperor did this out of ill-will towards the Genoese, and because of the conflict between him and the Church.) His forces took those Genoese galleys and damaged them and killed a number of people, and brought the prelates to Pisa, where some of them were scalped and others died in prison.

240 When the pope heard about this, he excommunicated the commune of Pisa, and it remained excommunicate for a long time thereafter. And because the Genoese had been injured, they armed galleys and other leins,² and set out against the Pisans and the men of the emperor, and harmed them a little.

241 Straightaway the emperor had sixty-five galleys armed in Sicily and in Apulia, and they came to Pisa. And the Pisans armed forty galleys (which made a total of 105 galleys). The Pisans’ admiral was a Genoese named Ansaldo de Mari,³ who was the imperial admiral.

The emperor also raised a host⁴ of horsemen and footmen and sent them by land to Genoa. These two hosts came by land and by sea to besiege Genoa. Those on the emperor’s galleys fired numerous missiles and quarrels with silver heads, and made a very noble showing. The other host came by land to a place called Levanto,⁵ very narrow and too rocky and uneven to allow horsemen. There are two towns on the slopes of the mountains; between these two towns is a very narrow valley, running to the sea, where a sandy beach meets the sea. In this place, the Genoese who lived there, along with others whom the Commune sent, mauled the emperor’s troops very severely, killing many with long lances and with quarrels, and in this manner the emperor’s men were crushed on the land.

242 On the same day, the Genoese came out by sea, with eighty heavily-armed galleys, to give battle to the imperial galleys. All the men got on board in person to defend their lands and their honour, and God aided them in their right and willed that the prelates should be avenged on them who [had taken their galleys, so that]⁶ the hundred [sic] galleys of the emperor were defeated outside the city of Genoa. The Genoese captured twenty-one galleys, eight of them galleys of the emperor and thirteen of them Pisan galleys.

This battle took place in that year in which the Cypriots took Tyre from the Lombards, which was in the year of the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1242, in the month of July.¹

243 This emperor, who was a most cruel and pitiless man at heart, was very opposed to Holy Church, and persecuted it. For this reason he met a bad end and came to naught, him and his heirs. Amongst the cruelties which he perpetrated is one that I will tell you about.

244 It happened that a number of his men, knights and burgesses and other people, misbehaved towards him according to the verdict of those who judged them. This misdeed caused him some harm (real or imagined). He had them seized, them and their wives and their children old and young (over the age of eight days), and put out the eyes of a number of them, and then had them burned in one place in one big group. There were about five hundred people altogether.

245 In the year of the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1243, Pope Celestine died, and Pope Innocent IV was made pope.² He had been born in Genoa, of a great family named Dalsses.³

This pope strongly urged the emperor to come to terms with Holy Church, and said he would receive him willingly, but the emperor would have none of it. So the pope deposed the emperor from the Empire, and assembled a host, and came against him and fought with him before the city of Baline. The emperor and his forces were so badly defeated here that he was never able to trouble Holy Church thereafter. He lived a short while after this, and then died six⁴ years after his defeat. His son King Conrad, who was the son of the queen of Jerusalem,¹ survived him. This Conrad was married to the daughter of the duke of Austria,² who was one of Germany’s great figures and was very rich. By this lady, his wife, this Conrad had a son named Conradin. You will hear him spoken of again in this book.

246 This Conrad of whom I have told you comported himself worse in his turn against Holy Church than his father the emperor had, and he died excommunicate, as had his father.³

247 The Emperor Frederick had another son called Manfred, who was born of adultery; I shall tell you how.

248 It happened that Emperor Frederick loved a gentlewoman of Lombardy, a marchioness⁴ – but as far as the emperor was concerned, she had no peer. By this woman he had his son, Manfred.

By and by the woman became ill and was near death. The Emperor had no wife, so he wished to marry her in order to legitimize Manfred, whom he loved. To this end he inquired of the doctors whether she would be able to recover from her illness. All the doctors assured him that she would not be able to recover in this world. On this assurance, the emperor married her – and as it pleased Our Lord, the woman recovered from her illness and lived for a time.

In this way Manfred was legitimized, so that when King Conrad died, this Manfred put himself forward, and took and seized the lordship and the goods of Emperor Frederick, his adulterous father, and said that he was legitimate and that he was the more rightful heir (since he was the son of the emperor) than the son of King Conrad, his brother.

249 At this, all the barons of the kingdom of Sicily and of the Principate and of Apulia accepted him as lord, and gave him the crown of the kingdom of Sicily, and he was its lord.

250 When the mother of Conradin, son of King Conrad, heard that Manfred was crowned and made lord, it truly seemed to her that he had disinherited her son Conradin, and she greatly feared that Manfred would try to poison her son by some means, to forestall his demanding his rights when he was of age. Because of this, the lady fed her son together with twelve other children his own age, dressed them all in the same colors, and showed equally great love to each of them. It was thus impossible for anyone else to have certain knowledge as to which of the children was her son. In this way the lady protected her own son.¹

251 This Manfred, who was made king as you have heard, married a lady who was the daughter of a great man of Greece named Michalichie.² He had children, both sons and daughters, by her.

I will tell you other matters relating to these events later, but now I will leave off talking about them and will turn instead to a different matter, so that I can relate things in a chronological fashion.

252 During the year 1244 of Christ, it happened in the kingdom of Jerusalem that a race of Saracens called the Khorezmians gave battle to the Christians in a place called Forbie.³ By the will of God, the Christians were badly defeated. Among the slain or captured were Brother Armand of Périgord, Master of the Temple;⁴ Brother William of Châteauneuf, Master of the Hospital⁵; Count Walter of Jaffa;⁶ the archbishop of Tyre;¹ Ralph, Bishop of St. George;² the two sons of the lord of Botron; the marshal of the Temple, Brother Hugh of Montaigu; and many other barons and knights.

253 In this year Balian, new Lord of Beirut, was struck in the right arm by an Assassin as he passed the Exchange in Acre. The wound was from a dagger; it did not kill him, though it maimed him.

254 In the same year, Geoffrey of Sergines and the Templars made camp at Jaffa, and the truce between them and the sultan³ of Damascus, which gave the Christians Jerusalem and the lands on this side of the river except for Nablus and Jericho, was reconfirmed.⁴

255 In 1245, the aforementioned Pope Innocent IV called a council at Lyons,⁵ and through the council he had Frederick II deposed from the empire, for it had been said that the pope had deposed him earlier on his own initiative, just because the pope was Genoese. But the general council deposed him for his evil deeds.

256 This was the council that gave the cross to good King Louis IX of France, for the succour of the Holy Land; his brothers and other counts, barons and knights were given the cross with him.

257 In the year 1246 of the Incarnation of Christ, Queen Alice of Cyprus, the mother of King Henry I the Fat,⁶ passed from this present age. She left the entire kingdom of Cyprus to King Henry.⁷ The Lord of Bei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• The ‘Templar of Tyre’ (§§237–702 of the Gestes des Chiprois)
• Glossary
• Select Bibliography
• Index