Both now retired from the University of Reading, Barber (Medieval history) and Bate (classics) have assembled letters not previously published in English, or those in archaic and inaccessible translat
No written source is entirely without literary artifice, but the letters sent from Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine in the high middle ages come closest to recording the real feelings of those who live
The Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, an early example of vernacular chronicle, by the Norman poet Ambroise, presents an eye-witness account of the Third Crusade (1188-92) in a highly-polished rhetorical s