No abstract

No abstract

This article examines the representation of Jerusalemite identity in William of Tyre’s Historia Ierosolymitana (c.1184). William laments that his contemporaries in Jerusalem did not live up to the standards of their forefathers anymore: they were not wise, virtuous men, but put their own needs before those of the community. In doing so, William makes use of a narrative strategy that is found in the Roman historians Livy and Sallust as well. In the histories of Livy and Sallust, it was contact with the Near East that prompted societal decline. The riches and dolce far niente of the East had, in their eyes, corrupted Roman morals. In William’s work, by contrast, the Eastern Other often functions as a mirror for the Self. This, in combination with William’s emphasis on former generations as reference point for the current generation allows for a much more dynamic interplay of identities than an orientalist binary East-West division.

This article argues that Peter of Eboli's Liber ad honorem Augusti (c. 1196) is the first work to link the classical topos of Sicily as nurse of tyrants to the use of Arabic elements in its contemporary court culture. Throughout the work, Peter associates Tancred with a series of Eastern despots from Classical Antiquity and his own time. In doing so, the book creates an image of the king (Tancred) as a markedly Oriental despot, which serves to antagonise and delegitimise him. The work therefore constitutes a key document in tracing the emergence of an anti-Oriental critique of the type directed at Frederick II about thirty years later.