Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/129

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 121 where the second contains obvious errors of transcription. The basis of his text is the Douai manuscript, which appears to give the second recension in its purest form. But in one case he has deviated from his rule to insert material which occurs in the first recension and is wanting in the second. He gives, as a separate chapter,^ the letter in which the princes announce the fall of Antioch to Urban II, and urge him to visit a city so closely associated with the Apostle Peter,. This document is certainly too impor- tant to be concealed in the obscurity of a critical apparatus. On the whole it is surprising how little Fulcher's frequent corrections affect his narrative in substance. He revised his work not so much with the purpose of correcting mistakes or adding new information as from a desire to make his story more readable and his phriOseology more elegant. His methods may be appreciated by comparing his original account of Jeru- salem with the revised version.^ These are too long for us to quote ; but the two descriptions of Frankish cannibalism at the siege of Marra^ are almost equally instructive. Recension I Plerique nostrum, exasperati famis rabie, absciderunt de natibus Sarraceni iam mortui frustum unum vel duo, quo parum assato devora- bant ore diro. Recension II Plerique nostrum famis rabie nimis vexati abscidebant de natibus Sarracenorum iam ibi mortuorum frusta quae coquebant et mande- bant et parum ad ignem assata ore truci devorabant. Sometimes there is more point than this in the revision. Thus Fulcher originally described* a massacre of Turkish women in the colourless words : feminas vero in tentoriis eorum inventcks interfecerunt. Subsequently, as though desirous of apologizing for his co-religionists, he expanded the sentence thus : mulieribus in tentoriis inventis, nihil alivd mali eis Franci fecerunt, excepto quod lanceas suas in ventres earum infixerunt. In some cases he makes a material addition. Three whole chapters are clumsily inserted, out of their right order, in the second book ; ^ they describe the battle of Harran, the escape of Baldwin de Burg from his first captivity, and the visit which Bohemond made to Western Europe in 1104. But Fulcher's tendency in revising is rather to omit than to enlarge. Thus he eliminates, in the second recension, a curious and valuable ca^^^Iogue of Turkish leaders, quos nominare perlongum est ; ® also a remarkable chronological passage in which he had dated the capture of Jerusalem as occurring in the two hundred and eighty-fifth year from the death of Charles the Great and in the twelfth from the death of William the Conqueror.' Those who have used Dr. Hagenmeyer's edition of the Gesta Francorum will need no assurances that he has provided a definitive text of Fulcher, and a commentary in which no difficulties of sense and no allusions are allowed to pass unnoticed. The index is marvellously complete, almost a concordance. The introduction, which exceeds a hundred pages, contains a life of Fulcher, an account of his style and idiosyncrasies, a discussion » I, c. 24. » I, c. 26. » II, cc. 27, 28, 29. I.e. 21. 3 I, c. 25. ' I, c. 30.
 * I, c. 23.