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William of St. Denis

William of St. Denis was a twelfth-century monk who wrote about the Second Crusade as well as a defense of another crusades chronicler, his Abbot, Odo of Deuil. His work Historia Peregrinorum offered an explanation for the unexpected failure of the Second Crusade in which the large and cumbersome army was compared with the massive and unwieldly army of the fifth-century B.C.E. Persian King Xerxes during his Greek campaign. William noted that the only reason the crusader army was able to escape destruction and make it home was because of the mercy of God. His work addressing the failure of the Second Crusade took place in an atmosphere of much criticism for those clerics who had advocated the crusade. No less a figure than St. Bernard, the most admired and influencial saint of the twelfth-century, felt compelled to write a defense of his advocacy of the crusade. Although both clerical accounts, they differ on the cause of the failure, with William pointing to tactical and strategic mistakes of the crusader army while Bernard ascribed the failure of the crusaders to sin. The French monk's fluency with languages was revealed in his translation of the Greek Corpus Dionysiacum, which William dedicated to Abbot Ivo (1169-72). William continued to translate no less than thirty seven additional Greek works into Latin.

Second Crusade- Crusades-Encyclopedia

Primary Sources of the Second Crusade- Crusades-Encyclopedia

Odo of Deuil- Crusades-Encyclopedia

Historia Peregrinorum- Crusades-Encyclopedia

St. Bernard of Clairvaux- Crusades-Encyclopedia

Xerxes- Crusades-Encyclopedia

Persia- Crusades-Encyclopedia

Crusades Chroniclers and Authors of Primary Sources- Crusades-Encyclopedia

(c) Andrew Holt, May 2005- Permission is granted for electronic copying and distribution in print for educational and personal use. No permission is granted for commercial use.